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Hotch Potch

A mutton and vegetable stew made with carrots, peas, parsley, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Hotch Potch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Combine shredded carrots and chopped parsley with boiling stock or water in a stewpan.

  2. Add grated yellow part of the young carrots and green peas.

  3. Add the mutton chops.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil gently for 1½ hours.

  2. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Add the remaining peas.

  4. Boil for an additional 30 minutes.

  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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + peastop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,994 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + peastop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,885 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

Mutton
Provides the main meat, releasing flavour into the broth as it simmers slowly.
Green peas
Add sweetness and a soft, tender texture to the finished stew.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the broth as they cook down.

The step that matters

Boil gently for 1½ hours. A gentle simmer lets the mutton become tender and release flavour slowly, while a hard rolling boil can toughen meat fibres and cloud the broth.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, parsley, mutton, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, parsley, mutton, 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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