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Irish Stew

A hearty stew of sliced potatoes and mutton cutlets simmered in gravy or water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 the meat

  1. Flatten the meat cutlets with a rolling pin and dip them in a mixture of pepper, salt, and flour.

Layer and stew

  1. Layer half of the sliced potatoes in a pot and season with salt and pepper.

  2. Add a layer of meat sprinkled with chopped onions, then repeat the layers until the pot is nearly full.

  3. Pour in the gravy or water until it reaches the top layer of potatoes.

  4. Cover tightly and let it stew slowly for about 3 hours, shaking the pot occasionally to prevent burning.

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

Potatoes
Form the bulk of the stew and thicken the liquid as their starch softens.
Back ribs or neck of mutton
Supply rich meat flavour and gelatin that enriches the braising liquid over long cooking.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften into the stew.
Flour
Coats the meat, helping it brown and lightly thickening the cooking liquid.
Suet or dripping
Adds fat that carries flavour and adds richness to the stew.

The step that matters

Cover tightly and stew slowly. Slow, gentle simmering breaks down tough meat connective tissue into tender texture. Shaking the pot helps keep ingredients from sticking and scorching on the base.

Swap the onion

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

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

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