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Irish Stew

A hearty stew of mutton, potatoes, and onions, seasoned with flour, salt, and pepper, simmered slowly in water.

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

Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Irish Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the meat into small pieces.

  2. Slice the potatoes and onions raw.

  3. Mix the flour, pepper, and salt; dip each piece of meat into the mixture.

Layer and stew

  1. Layer sliced potatoes at the bottom of a pan, followed by a layer of meat, then onions, repeating until the dish is full, finishing with a layer of potatoes.

  2. Pour the water over the entire dish and stew slowly for 1½ hours.

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 + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Breast of mutton
Provides the main protein, which softens into tender meat during slow stewing.
Potatoes
Form the bulk of the dish and thicken the stew as their starch breaks down.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften and release their flavour into the liquid.
Flour
Coats the meat and helps thicken the cooking liquid into a light gravy.

The step that matters

Stew slowly with the water added. Slow, gentle heat with enough liquid keeps the tough mutton tender and prevents it from drying out or toughening, while the potatoes cook through.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, potato, flour, pepper):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, potato, flour, pepper. 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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