Name: Pepper-pot
Ingredients: ½ pound good white tripe, boiled and skimmed; 1 neck of mutton; 1 pound lean ham; 1 gallon water; 2 large onions, sliced; 4 potatoes, quartered; 4 turnips, sliced; a very small piece of red pepper; for dumplings: butter, flour, and a little water

Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Pepper-pot

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

Cut the boiled tripe into small strips.
In a pot, boil the neck of mutton and lean ham in 1 gallon of water, skimming the pot as needed.

Build the soup

Add sliced onions, quartered potatoes, sliced turnips, and red pepper to the pot.
Add the boiled tripe to the pot.
In a bowl, mix butter and flour with a little water to make small dumplings.
Add the dumplings to the pepper-pot.
Boil for about 45 minutes.
Remove the meat, leaving the tripe.
Pour the soup into a tureen.

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.

Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,585 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,874 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Potato + turniptop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together562 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,305 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

Tripe: Provides chewy texture and body to the soup.
Neck of mutton: Releases meat flavor and richness into the broth as it simmers.
Lean ham: Adds savory, salty depth to the broth.
Potatoes: Thicken the soup slightly as their starch leaches out during boiling.
Onions: Add sweetness and aromatic depth as they soften in the broth.
Butter and flour: Form dumplings that add richness and soft, doughy body to the soup.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, ham, onion, potato, pepper, butter, flour):

Leekfits about as well
Chivefits about as well
Carrotfits about as well
Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, ham, onion, potato, pepper, butter, flour. 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.