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Irish Stew with Dumplings

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Irish Stew with Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Wipe and cut the mutton into pieces.

  2. Put the mutton in a kettle, cover with boiling water, and cook slowly for 2 hours until tender.

  3. After 1 hour, add the vegetables cut into small pieces.

  4. Thicken the stew with ¼ cup flour diluted with water to form a paste.

  5. Season to taste and serve with dumplings.

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.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

  3. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Turnip + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Lamb + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together520 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, carrot, turnip, flour):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, carrot, turnip, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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