Skip to main content
Main

Irish Stew

A hearty stew of mutton or lamb with onions, potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, celery, parsley, peas, and a milk‑corn starch gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Irish Stew

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Irish Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the meat

  1. Heat the butter or beef dripping in a saucepan.

  2. Brown the sliced onion in the fat, then add the mutton pieces.

  3. Turn the meat until coated and slightly browned.

  4. Add enough cold water to cover the meat by an inch.

  5. Cover tightly and stew for 2 hours or until the meat is very tender.

Cook the vegetables

  1. In another pot, cook the sliced potatoes, diced carrot, chopped tomato, minced celery, and chopped parsley for 15 minutes.

  2. Drain the vegetables and add them to the stew, seasoning to taste.

  3. Cook gently for another 30 minutes.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Remove the meat and vegetables with a perforated spoon and arrange on a flat dish.

  2. In the saucepan, add the peas and hot milk mixed with corn starch, cooking for 5 minutes.

  3. Pour the gravy over the meat and vegetables.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton or lamb
Becomes tender and flavorful during long, slow stewing in liquid.
Butter or beef dripping
Carries browning flavor from the onion and meat into the stew.
Potatoes
Soften and thicken the stew slightly as they break down during cooking.
Onion
Browns in the fat to add sweetness and savory depth to the stew.
Corn starch
Thickens the hot milk into a smooth gravy when heated.

The step that matters

Cover tightly and stew gently until the meat is very tender. Long, low-heat simmering in covered liquid breaks down tough connective tissue in mutton. Boiling hard or stopping early leaves the meat chewy.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, butter, onion, potato, carrot, celery, parsley):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, onion, potato, carrot, celery, parsley. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesGreen PeasGreen Peas229 recipes