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Scottish Hotch-Potch

A Scottish stew of lamb ribs with carrots, turnips, onions, lettuce, peas, cauliflower, parsley, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Scottish Hotch-Potch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Make stock using sweet fresh lamb or mutton.

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Grate the carrots.

  2. Slice the carrots.

  3. Slice the turnips.

  4. Slice the onions.

  5. Slice the lettuce.

  6. Slice the parsley.

  7. Combine all vegetables to make a full quart.

  8. Add another quart of green peas and cauliflower sprigs.

  9. Add the vegetables to the stock.

  10. Reserve half the peas until near the end.

Cook and serve

  1. Trim excess fat from the lamb ribs.

  2. Add the trimmed lamb ribs to the stock.

  3. Boil well and skim carefully.

  4. Add the remaining peas, white pepper, and salt.

  5. Serve the cutlets in a tureen with the hotch-potch.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Turnip + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together526 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together286 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. Lettuce + cauliflowertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together151 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb ribs
Provide the meat and rich flavour that the stock and the whole dish are built around.
Green peas
Add sweetness and a soft, tender texture to the broth.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and colour to the broth.
Turnips
Add body and a mild, slightly peppery sweetness as they cook.

The step that matters

Skim the broth after boiling. Boiling releases fat and fine foam from the lamb, which can cloud the broth and make it greasy. Skimming carefully keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, lettuce, parsley, peas, cauliflower, lamb):

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, lettuce, parsley, peas, cauliflower, lamb. 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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