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Irish Stew

A hearty mutton stew with onions, potatoes, carrots, turnips, celery, and parsley, cooked slowly in clarified dripping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the stew

  1. Heat the clarified dripping in a stewpan and add the onions and mutton. Fry gently for 15 minutes without browning.

  2. Remove the meat and stir in the flour until it is mixed with the fat in the pan.

  3. Add the warm water and return the meat to the pan.

Bake and simmer

  1. Cover and place in a 350°F (175°C) oven.

  2. After 1 hour, add the potatoes, carrots, turnips, and celery.

  3. Simmer for another hour or longer, depending on oven temperature.

Serve

  1. Serve the meat in a circle with carrots and turnips in the center, and arrange the potatoes around the dish.

  2. Add the minced parsley to the sauce, bring to a boil, and pour 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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Neck of mutton
Supplies the meat that becomes tender during the long, gentle braise.
Flour
Mixed with the fat to form a roux that thickens the stew liquid.
Potatoes
Soften during simmering and add starch that helps body the stew.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they fry gently in the dripping, adding savoury depth.

The step that matters

Fry gently without browning. Browning the onions and mutton would change the flavour and colour of the stew. Gentle frying softens the onions and renders fat slowly, keeping the sauce pale and mild.

Swap the onion

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

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

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

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