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Irish Stew

A simple stew of meat simmered with water, parsley, onions, and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Irish Stew

Why it works: Parsley and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 25,843 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Irish Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a kettle, combine the meat and enough water to cover it.

  2. Add the parsley, sliced onions, and coarse sea salt.

  3. Boil for 15 minutes, allowing half of the water to evaporate.

Can and process

  1. Can the meat, covering it with the broth.

  2. Seal airtight and process: 1 lb cans for 1 hour 20 minutes at 238°F, 2 lb cans for 2 hours at 238°F, and 3 lb cans for 2 hours 15 minutes at 240°F.

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. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  2. Meat + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,364 recipes

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

  3. Meat + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,040 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Meat
Provides the main body; long cooking breaks down connective tissue, so the meat turns tender and flavours the broth.
Sliced onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften and release their flavour into the broth.
Parsley
Adds a fresh, herbal aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Sealing and processing the cans. Meat is a low-acid food, so it must be processed for the full stated time at the stated temperature for its can size. Underprocessing can leave heat-resistant bacterial spores alive, which is a serious safety risk in sealed food.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, onion. 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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