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Winter Hotch-Potch
Soak three-quarters of a pound of dried green peas overnight, then boil them till tender, and pulp them through a sieve. Take from three to four pounds of the best end of the neck or loin of mutton, or of the thick flank of beef. Either cut the meat into neat pieces or keep it whole, as preferred. Grate four carrots, and cut as many turnips into small dice. Put them, with a few sticks of celery and a large onion, or a leek and a bunch of parsley, into a stewpan, pour over them about four quarts of water, and bring them gently to the boil. Put in the meat, add pepper and salt, and simmer all gently together for about two hours. Add the pulped peas, boil a quarter of an hour longer, and serve. If liked, a cabbage, finely shredded, may be added to the other vegetables. The meat may either be served with the soup or on a separate dish. If liked, it may be taken out when it is done enough, and put aside till it is to be served, then heated again in a little of the soup. Rice or pearl barley may be substituted for the peas. Time, two hours to stew the vegetables. Probable cost, 4s. Sufficient for eight or ten persons.
A Scottish broth in its cold-weather form, thickened with a purée of dried peas rather than the fresh green peas of summer hotch-potch. The method is sound; only the quantities and a few vessel assumptions need translating.
- The hinge: pulp the peas separatelyThe dried peas are cooked and sieved on their own, then stirred in only for the last fifteen minutes, so the finished broth is lightly thickened rather than cloudy with pea debris.
- Quantities in modern termsThree-quarters of a pound of dried peas is about 340 g. Four quarts is about 4.5 litres in imperial measure, nearer 19 US cups than 16 — you need a stockpot of at least 6 litres.
- Dried green peasThese are whole dried green peas, not the split peas most shops now stock. Split peas will work and collapse faster, but they break down on their own and largely remove the need to sieve.
- The cutsBest end of neck is the rack; loin and thick flank are all still available, though a butcher may need asking. Neck and loin are bone-in and fatty, which is the point — the broth gets its body from them; thick flank of beef is lean and boneless and will give a thinner result.
- Skim, and skim againMutton throws a good deal of grey scum and fat in the first twenty minutes. The recipe assumes you know to lift it off; leave it and the finished soup tastes tallowy. Chilling the pot overnight and lifting the set fat is easier still.
- Two hours is a minimumNeck of mutton at a bare simmer wants two to three hours to give up its collagen. Judge by the meat pulling from the bone rather than the clock, and keep the surface barely trembling — a rolling boil makes the meat stringy and clouds the broth.
- Grated carrot, diced turnipWhether or not the difference is intended, it works: grated carrot dissolves into the body of the soup and sweetens it, while the diced turnip stays as texture. Keep it that way rather than cutting everything alike.
- Barley or rice insteadThe book gives no quantity or timing for either. Pearl barley needs far longer than the quarter hour allowed for the pulped peas, so add it earlier, with the meat; rice needs only the closing stretch of the simmer.
- Cost and yieldFour shillings was a substantial outlay for a household soup in the late Victorian period. It feeds eight to ten as written, and improves on the second day once the fat has set and been lifted.
Hotch-potch — the name shares a root with the French hochepot, a pot whose contents are shaken or tossed together, and with the legal term hotchpot for property thrown into a common pool — is the Scottish standby of vegetables simmered with mutton until the distinction between soup and stew stops mattering. The summer version is the famous one, made with young peas, broad beans, baby turnips and lettuce in June; this winter form substitutes what a cellar and a sack of dried peas could supply in February. The instruction that the meat may be served in the soup or lifted out onto a separate dish points to how a Victorian household stretched a joint: one boiling produced both the broth for the first course and the boiled mutton for the second, at a cost of roughly five to sixpence a head.