Lancashire hotpot

Lancashire hotpot

Lancashire hotpot
Course	Main course
Place of origin	Lancashire, England
Serving temperature	Hot
Main ingredients	Lamb or mutton, onions, potatoes
Media: Lancashire hotpot

Lancashire hotpot is a stew originating in Lancashire in the North West of England. It consists of lamb or mutton and onion, topped with sliced potatoes and slowly baked in a pot at a low heat.

In the 17th century, the word "hotpot" referred not to a stew but to a hot drink—a mixture of ale and spirits, or sweetened spiced ale.^[1] An early use of the term to mean a meat stew was in The Liverpool Telegraph in 1836: "hashes, and fricassees, and second-hand Irish hot-pots"^[2] and the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) cites the dish as being served in Liverpool in 1842.^[1] The Oxford Companion to Food (OCF) cites Elizabeth Gaskell's 1854 novel North and South, depicting hot-pot as the most prized dish among cotton workers in a northern town.^[3][4]

The OED gives the etymology as "hot adj. + pot n.", and cites the analogous French term pot-au-feu.^[1] The OCF refers to earlier forms of the term: "hotchpotch" (a mixed dish, typically a meat and vegetable stew) and "hotchpot", from the medieval French hochepot.^{[3][n 1]} A Book of Cookrye (1591) gives a recipe for hodgepodge, using "neck of mutton or a fat rump of beef", cooked and served in a broth thickened with bread.^[6] The term "hotchpotch" for a stew continued into the 19th century: Mrs Beeton (1861) gives a recipe under that name for a beef and onion stew in beer.^[7]

Hotpot became associated with Lancashire. In the OCF the food historian Roy Shipperbottom writes:

The recipe usually calls for a mix of mutton (nowadays more frequently lamb) and onions covered with sliced potato, and slowly baked in a pot containing stock or sometimes water. The traditional Lancashire hotpot dish is tall, round and straight-sided, with a lid.^[3][8] Some early recipes add lamb kidneys or oysters to the dish; it is traditionally served with pickled red cabbage.^[8]

• Beeton, Isabella (1861). The Book of Household Management. London: S.O. Beeton. OCLC 1045333327.
• Gaskell, Elizabeth (1951). North and South. London: John Lehman. OCLC 1897946.
• Shipperbottom, Roy (2014). "hotpot". In Alan Davidson; Tom Jaine (eds.). Oxford Companion to Food (third ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-104072-6.

• Sunday roast
• Hodge-Podge
• Irish stew
• Nikujaga
• Pot roast
• Scotch broth
• Scouse
• Stovies

• History of Lancashire Hotpot at Foods of England