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Irish Stew

A stew of meat, potatoes, vegetables, dumpling, bread, beer, and liquor from previous day's meat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Irish Stew

Why it works: Meat and potato work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 786 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Irish Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. In a pot, combine 3 oz. of meat with the liquor from the previous day's meat.

  2. Add 12 oz. of diced potatoes and other vegetables.

  3. Simmer until the meat and vegetables are tender.

Serve

  1. Serve with 6 oz. of bread and 1 pint of beer.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Meat + potatotop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together786 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Potato + beertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together145 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Bread + beertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together146 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

  5. Potato + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together434 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Meat
Provides savory flavor and becomes tender during slow simmering.
Potatoes
Add starch that softens and slightly thickens the stew as they cook.
Other vegetables
Add sweetness and body, softening as they simmer in the broth.
Liquor from meat of previous day
Supplies the moist, savory broth that cooks the meat and vegetables.

The step that matters

Simmer until tender. Keep the liquid at a gentle simmer rather than a hard boil. Vigorous boiling toughens meat proteins and can break up the potatoes, leaving a stew that is tough and ragged instead of tender.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, bread, beer):

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, bread, beer. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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