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Irish Stew

A hearty stew of potatoes, meat, and brown gravy simmered until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Irish Stew

Why it works: Potato and meat 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

Prepare

  1. Peel and chop the potatoes.

  2. Cut the meat into chunks.

Cook the stew

  1. In a large pot, layer the potatoes and meat.

  2. Pour brown gravy over the layers.

  3. Cover and simmer until the meat is tender and potatoes are cooked through.

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. Potato + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together786 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide the bulk of the stew and thicken the liquid as their starch releases during cooking.
Meat
Adds savory flavor and, after slow simmering, becomes tender as its connective tissue breaks down.
Brown gravy
Supplies the cooking liquid and savory, browned flavor that the potatoes and meat absorb.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until the meat is tender. Keeping the liquid at a gentle simmer rather than a hard boil lets the meat's connective tissue break down slowly, so it turns tender instead of tough. Cooking too fast can leave the meat chewy while the potatoes break apart.

“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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