potpourri

Potpourri comes from French pot-pourri, meaning "stew, potpourri," which itself was a calque of Spanish olla podrida, literally "rotten pot."

The phrase began as a description of a mixed, slow-cooked stew of many ingredients thrown together, and that idea of a fragrant jumble carried over into the mixed dried flowers we now call potpourri.

It's a doublet of olla podrida — the two words descend from the same underlying idea, one staying close to its Spanish stew roots, the other drifting into French and English as a scented mixture.