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Pepper-pot Hotch Potch

A hearty soup of mutton or fowl, pickled pork, vegetables, and lobster or crab, seasoned with salt and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and endive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 284 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Pepper-pot Hotch Potch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pot

  1. Bring 3 quarts of water to a boil in a large pot.

  2. Add the seasonal vegetables and the meat (mutton or fowl with pickled pork).

Simmer and season

  1. Skim the surface when it first boils, then reduce heat and simmer until everything is tender.

  2. Add a small quantity of rice with the meat.

  3. If desired, include small suet dumplings boiled with the pot.

  4. Half an hour before serving, add the lobster or crab.

  5. Season with salt and cayenne to taste.

  6. If any fat rises, skim it off and mix 1 cup of water with a little flour to thicken the broth.

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. Lettuce + endivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together284 recipes

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

  2. Spinach + endivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together60 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Lettuce + spinachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together427 recipes

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

  4. Endive + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together65 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Lettuce + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together526 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

Mutton or fowl with pickled pork
Provides the meat flavour that gives the broth its body and richness.
Lobster or crab
Adds sweet, delicate seafood flavour to the broth.
Rice
Swells as it cooks, adding body and thickening the broth.
Flour
Mixed with water to thicken the broth through starch gelatinisation.

The step that matters

Skim the surface when it first boils. Foam and impurities rise as the liquid first heats. Removing them early keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting before the long simmer.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, cauliflower, lettuce, spinach, endive, carrot, turnip):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, cauliflower, lettuce, spinach, endive, carrot, turnip. 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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