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A Pepper-pot

A stew of mutton, pickled pork, crab or lobster, and vegetables simmered in water with cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 427 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

A Pepper-pot

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the vegetables very small.

  2. In a large pot, combine the water, vegetables, mutton, and pickled pork.

Stew and serve

  1. Stew until the meat is tender.

  2. Half an hour before serving, remove the shell from the crab or lobster and add it to the stew.

  3. Optionally, add small suet dumplings or boil rice separately to serve with the dish.

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. Lettuce + spinachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together427 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Spinach + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together320 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Neck of mutton
Provides the main meat flavour and becomes tender during the long stew.
Pickled pork
Adds salty, savoury depth to the broth as it cooks.
Crab or lobster
Adds sweet shellfish flavour to the broth when added near the end.

The step that matters

Stew until the meat is tender. Mutton neck is a tough cut of collagen-rich connective tissue. Slow, gentle simmering over a long time converts it to gelatin, so the meat becomes tender and the broth gains body. Rushing this step leaves the meat chewy.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, spinach, onion, carrot, turnip, celery, mutton. 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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