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Pepper Pot

A beef stew with carrots, turnips, onions, potatoes, and pepper, topped with a pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Pepper Pot

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the ox heel or beef cut until tender, skimming the surface regularly.

  2. When nearly done, add the sliced carrots, turnips, onions, and potatoes.

  3. Season with Cayenne pepper, black pepper, and coarse sea salt.

Make and add the crust

  1. Make a pastry crust by mixing flour, water, and butter, then roll it thin.

  2. Cut the rolled crust into strips half a finger long and half an inch wide.

  3. Add the strips to the pot half an hour before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

  4. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Ox heel or beef cut
Provides the meat and rich flavour in the broth as it cooks until tender.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the soup as they soften during cooking.
Turnips
Contribute a mild, slightly sweet flavour and soft texture to the soup.
Onions
Build savoury depth in the broth as they cook down.
Potatoes
Thicken the soup slightly as their starch releases during simmering.
Flour, water, and butter
Form a pastry crust whose butter adds richness and tenderness to the strips.

The step that matters

Skimming the surface while boiling the beef. Skimming removes foam and coagulated impurities that would otherwise cloud the broth and give it a scummy taste, so the soup stays clear and clean-flavoured.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, turnip, potato, pepper, flour, butter):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, potato, pepper, flour, butter. 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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