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Dessert

Irish Stew

A small almond cake made with almond paste, powdered sugar, eggs, suet, and topped with almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Irish Stew

Why it works: Almond and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,679 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Irish Stew

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Chop the almond paste into fine crumbs.

  3. Separate and beat the eggs, then mix in the powdered sugar.

  4. Combine the crumbled almond paste with the egg mixture until smooth.

  5. Grease sheets of thin paper with suet and cut to fit a baking pan.

Shape and bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto the greased paper, spacing them about 2 inches apart. Top each spoonful with 3 or 4 pieces of split almond.

  2. Bake in the preheated oven for about 10 minutes.

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. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Almond + eggtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,645 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Almond paste
Provides the main almond flavour and a chewy, dense body once baked.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and dissolves into the paste to give a smooth, fine-textured batter.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help the tarts set and hold their shape in the oven.

The step that matters

Combine the almond paste with the egg mixture until smooth. If lumps of almond paste remain, the batter bakes unevenly and the texture turns grainy. Crumbling the paste finely first helps it blend fully into the eggs and sugar.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg):

  1. Pecansfits about as well
  2. Almondthe original
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Milletfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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