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Irish Stew

A hearty stew of mutton, onions, potatoes, and water, seasoned with salt and pepper.

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

Why it works: Onion and potato 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 mutton into handsome pieces.

Make the stew

  1. In a stew pan, heat half the fat with the onions and stir for 8 to 10 minutes over high heat.

  2. Add the mutton, sprinkle with flour, salt, and pepper, and stir for 10 minutes.

  3. Pour in the boiling water and simmer for 1 hour.

  4. Peel the potatoes and add them to the stew.

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. Onion + potatotop 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

Neck of mutton
Provides the main meat, whose connective tissue softens into tender bites during long simmering.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook in the fat, adding depth to the broth.
Potatoes
Absorb the savory broth and thicken the stew as their starch releases during cooking.
Flour
Coats the meat and thickens the cooking liquid into a richer, cohesive sauce.

The step that matters

Pour in the boiling water and simmer for 1 hour. Starting with boiling water and keeping the stew at a gentle simmer helps the mutton become tender without toughening. Boiling hard can make the meat firm and cloudy.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, potato, 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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