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Hotch Potch

A mutton and vegetable stew with peas, cauliflower, carrot, turnip, onion, parsley, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

Prepare

  1. Cut the mutton into neat pieces and place in a stewpan with 3 pints of water and 1 teaspoon of salt.

  2. Bring to a boil slowly, skimming off any foam.

  3. Finely shred the lettuce.

  4. Cut the cauliflower into small sprigs.

  5. Dice the turnip, carrot, and onion.

Simmer

  1. Let the meat simmer gently for about 1 hour.

  2. Add the onion, carrot, and lettuce.

  3. Simmer for another 30 minutes.

  4. Add the turnip, peas, and cauliflower.

  5. Cook slowly for about 1 hour until all vegetables are tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the chopped parsley.

  2. Season with salt and pepper, 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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 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

Neck of mutton
Long, gentle simmering breaks down connective tissue, making the meat tender and flavouring the broth.
Onion
Its sugars and aromatic compounds build the savoury base of the broth.

The step that matters

Keep the simmer gentle. A hard boil toughens meat proteins and churns the broth cloudy. Slow heat tenderises the neck of mutton and keeps the vegetables intact.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, onion, carrot, turnip, cauliflower, parsley, 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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