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Irish Stew

A stew of onion, potato, milk, eggs, and butter served over split baking powder biscuits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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

Make the stew

  1. Combine the chopped onion and water in a pot.

  2. Add the bay leaf and salt, then simmer until the onion is tender.

  3. Remove the bay leaf.

  4. Stir in the milk and sliced potato.

  5. Simmer until the potato is tender.

  6. Blend the flour with the butter.

  7. Add the mixture to the pot.

  8. Stir in the chopped hard boiled eggs.

Serve

  1. Serve over split baking powder biscuits, garnished with parsley.

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 + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Onion + biscuittop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together428 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 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

Flour
Thickens the stew liquid when blended with butter and heated.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the flour blend smoothly and adding body.
Potato
Adds starch and body, softening to make the stew heartier.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the stew and adds mild sweetness.
Hard boiled eggs
Add protein-rich texture and a soft, creamy bite to the stew.

The step that matters

Blend the flour with the butter. Mixing flour into butter before adding it to the hot liquid coats the flour particles with fat, which helps prevent lumps when the mixture is stirred into the stew and lets it thicken evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, potato, flour, butter, egg, biscuit, parsley):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, potato, flour, butter, egg, biscuit, 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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