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Irish Stew

A hearty stew of mutton, onions, turnip, carrot, potatoes, and dumplings made with butter and sweet milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Irish Stew

Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Irish Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat and base

  1. Wipe and cut the mutton into pieces, removing skin and fat.

  2. Heat a little fat in a saucepan, then remove scraps and add onions; cook until light brown.

  3. Sprinkle the meat with salt, pepper, and flour, then add to the onions; cover with boiling water.

  4. Add the parboiled turnip and carrot; simmer for 2 hours.

Add potatoes and thicken

  1. Wash, pare, and slice the potatoes; parboil for 5 minutes, then drain and add to the stew.

  2. Cook until the potatoes are soft; season with salt and pepper.

  3. Remove the fat from the stew; if not thick enough, add a little flour mixed with cold water.

  4. Strain the stew and cook for 5 minutes; pour the gravy over the meat and vegetables.

Make dumplings and finish

  1. For dumplings, sift flour, salt, and baking powder together.

  2. Mix butter with fingers, then moisten with sweet milk to form a soft dough.

  3. Toss on a floured board, pat to ½ inch thick, and cut into small rounds or drop by spoonfuls into the boiling stew.

  4. Cook dumplings for 15 minutes without removing the cover.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Shoulder of mutton
Provides the meat, which becomes tender and flavourful during long simmering.
Onions
Browning them builds sweetness and savoury depth in the stew base.
Potatoes
Soften during cooking and help thicken the stew as they break down.
Flour
Coats the meat and later thickens the gravy, giving it body.
Pint flour
Forms the structure of the dumplings as it sets with the leavening.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough, helping the dumplings rise and turn light.

The step that matters

Keep the stew at a gentle simmer while cooking the dumplings. Boiling hard can toughen the meat and break up the dumplings. A covered, steady simmer lets the dumplings steam and set through without falling apart.

Swap the onion

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

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

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