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Hotch Potch

A stew of mutton, peas, carrots, turnips, celery, and onion boiled together.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Hotch Potch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Boil the peas in 1 quart of water until tender, then pulp through a sieve.

Make the stew

  1. Cut the mutton into chops and place in a saucepan with 1 gallon of water.

  2. Add the chopped carrots and turnips, and season with pepper and salt.

  3. Boil until all vegetables are tender.

  4. Stir in the pulped peas, chopped celery, and sliced onion.

  5. Boil for an additional 15 minutes, then serve.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

Peas
Pulped peas thicken the broth and give it body and a mild sweetness.
Loin of mutton
Provides rich meat flavour and fat that enriches the broth.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and colour while softening during the long boil.
Turnips
Contribute a mildly peppery flavour and soft texture to the stew.
Celery
Adds aromatic, savoury flavour to the broth.

The step that matters

Pulping the peas. Peas must be cooked fully tender before pulping, otherwise they will not pass through the sieve smoothly. Pulped peas dissolve into the broth and thicken it, so skipping this step leaves the stew thin and grainy.

Swap the peas

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

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

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