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A Pepper Pot

A stew of mutton, pickled pork, and optional lobster or crab, seasoned with salt and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,137 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

A Pepper Pot

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the vegetables very small and add them to 3 quarts of water.

  2. Add 2 pounds of neck of mutton and 1 pound of pickled pork, and stew until tender.

Finish the pot

  1. Half an hour before serving, remove the shell from the lobster or crab and add it to the pot.

  2. Optionally, add small suet dumplings to the pot.

  3. For a heartier dish, boil a small quantity of rice and add it to the pot.

  4. Season with salt and Cayenne pepper to taste.

  5. You can substitute mutton with a fowl if desired.

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. Pork + ricetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  2. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Mutton + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,239 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

  4. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 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

Neck of mutton
Provides rich meat flavor and becomes tender during long, slow stewing.
Pickled pork
Adds salty, savory flavor to the stewing liquid.
Lobster or crab
Adds sweet seafood flavor when its shell is added near the end of cooking.

The step that matters

Stewing the mutton until tender. Neck of mutton is tough connective tissue that needs a long, gentle simmer to break down. Boiling hard or stopping too early leaves the meat chewy.

“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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