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Irish Stew

A hearty stew of lean beef, potatoes, onions, herbs, and dumplings made with browned flour thickening.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Irish Stew

Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Irish Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the meat into pieces 1 inch wide and 2 inches long.

  2. Slice the parboiled potatoes and onions.

Stew

  1. In a pot, layer the meat, then potatoes, then onions, seasoning each layer with pepper and salt, and scattering herbs on the onions.

  2. Cover the layers barely with cold water and stew slowly for 2 hours.

  3. Strain out the meat and place it in a covered dish.

Thicken and serve

  1. Return the gravy to the saucepan and thicken it with browned flour.

  2. Cut the pie-paste into narrow strips 2 inches long and drop them one by one into the boiling gravy.

  3. Cook for about 8 minutes and pour over the meat and vegetables in the dish.

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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Marjoram + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  4. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Potato + thymetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,586 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

Beef
Lean meat that becomes tender during slow stewing, giving the stew its main body.
Potatoes
Starchy vegetable that softens during stewing and adds body to the gravy.
Onions
Aromatic vegetable that sweetens and flavours the gravy as it stews.
Browned flour
Starch that thickens the gravy when it is returned to the saucepan.
Pie-paste
Pastry strips that cook in the boiling gravy to form soft dumplings.

The step that matters

Stew slowly with only a barely-covering of cold water. Slow, gentle simmering keeps the lean beef tender rather than tough. Starting with cold water and cooking gently lets the meat's connective tissue break down and flavour the gravy evenly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, potato, flour, thyme, marjoram, 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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