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Hot-pot

Layered potato, onion, and tomato bake in water with butter, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Hot-pot

Ingredients

Directions

Assemble

  1. Layer the potatoes, onions, and tomatoes in a small pie dish.

  2. Sprinkle pepper and coarse sea salt between the layers.

  3. Cut the butter into small pieces and scatter over the top.

  4. Fill the dish with boiling water.

Cook

  1. Boil the hot-pot for 1 to 1.5 hours, adding more hot water if needed.

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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Potato + tomatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the bulk of the dish, softening as they cook to give a tender, starchy body.
Tomatoes
Add moisture and acidity that brightens the flavour and helps the layers stay juicy.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, melting down through the layers to moisten the potatoes.
Spanish onion
Contributes sweetness and aroma as it softens during the long cooking.

The step that matters

Keeping the dish topped up with hot water during the boil. Potatoes need steady, moist heat to cook through evenly. If the liquid drops too low, the top layers can dry out or stay firm while the bottom scorches or stews unevenly.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, onion, butter, pepper):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, onion, butter, 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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