Hutspot 's a dish of boiled and mashed potatoes, carrots and onions with a long history in traditional Dutch cuisine. History of the dish According to legend, the recipe came from the cooked bits of potato left behind by hastily departing Spanish soldiers during their siege of Leiden in 1574 during the Eighty Year's War, when the liberators breached the dikes of the lower lying polders surrounding the city. This flooded all the fields around the city with around a foot of water. As there were f… (More on Hutspot)