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Hoche Pot (Slice an onion and fry it)
Slice an onion and fry it in butter till it is brown; add pieces of pork and of mutton freed from fat and skin; cover them with water and throw into it any kinds of vegetables that you may have; but particularly sliced carrots and turnips and green cabbages; put it in the oven to cook. In another saucepan boil some white haricot beans, salt, and pepper, until they are tender, when they must be added to the stew with a small quantity of the liquor that they have been boiled in.
A stew with no quantities, no temperature and no times, in the manner of household cookery books that assumed the cook already knew. The one thing to get right is the heat: this wants a long, slow, barely-bubbling oven, not a roasting one.
- Oven heat and timeUse 300-325F, covered, for 2 1/2 to 3 hours until the pork and mutton pull apart easily. Anything hotter will boil the meat hard before the connective tissue softens.
- Working proportionsFor four to six people: one large onion, about 1 1/2 lb pork shoulder and 1 lb mutton or lamb shoulder cut in 2-inch pieces, 3 carrots, 2 turnips, half a Savoy cabbage, and roughly 1 1/2 cups dried white beans. Water to cover means just covering, not drowning.
- Haricot beansThese are dried white beans -- navy, cannellini or the Belgian soup bean. Soak overnight and simmer separately as directed, 45-90 minutes depending on age. Two 15 oz cans, drained, with a little of their liquid, stand in acceptably; add them in the last twenty minutes.
- MuttonTrue mutton is rare in most markets. Lamb shoulder or leg works, though it is milder and needs less cooking; a hogget or older lamb shoulder is closer to the original. Trim the fat and skin as instructed.
- Cabbage timingGreen cabbage cooked for three hours becomes grey and sulphurous. Add the carrots and turnips at the start and the cabbage, cut in wedges, in the final 30-40 minutes.
- Brown the onion properly"Till it is brown" is the recipe's only source of depth -- there is no flour, stock or wine here. Take the onion well past translucent in the butter, and brown the meat in the same pan before adding water.
- SeasoningSalt and pepper are given only for the beans. The stew itself needs salting; do it after an hour, when the liquid has reduced and you can judge it. Bay and cloves turn up in some Flemish versions.
- ServingServe in deep bowls with the bean liquor as part of the broth, and bread or boiled potatoes alongside. It improves reheated the next day.
Hochepot is related to the word that came into English as hotchpotch and hodgepodge -- from the Old French hochepot, built on hocher, to shake or jostle, describing what happens to the contents of the pot rather than any fixed list of ingredients. That is why the recipe says "any kinds of vegetables that you may have." Ghent has the best-known regional version, usually with pigs' ears and tails and several meats at once; the Dutch hutspot is a mashed cousin. The book appears to be one of the Belgian relief cookery books published in Britain during the First World War, when Belgian refugees had arrived in large numbers and Belgium itself was under occupation -- which suits the tone of a dish assembled from whatever the larder holds, two cheap cuts and a pot of dried beans stretched across a table.