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Hotch-potch

A lamb and vegetable stew simmered slowly until tender, optionally finished with rice or suet dumplings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Hotch-potch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim the skin and excess fat from the lamb chops and cut the smaller ends into pieces.

Stew

  1. In a stewpan, layer the lamb chops and chopped vegetables alternately until all are used. Cover the layers with water.

  2. Let it stew gently for several hours until the meat and vegetables are tender and the soup thickens.

  3. Skim off any fat that rises to the surface.

  4. Half an hour before serving, add optional rice or small suet dumplings if desired.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Lettuce + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together526 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lamb chops
Provides the main meat and rich flavour that gives the stew its body.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth as they soften during the long stew.
Carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and firm texture that holds up through slow cooking.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and starch that helps thicken the broth as they break down.

The step that matters

Gentle, long stewing. Keeping the liquid at a gentle simmer lets collagen in the lamb slowly break down into gelatin, making the meat tender and the broth silky. Boiling hard toughens the meat and can cloud the soup.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, onion, celery, lettuce, carrot, turnip, pepper):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, onion, celery, lettuce, carrot, turnip, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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