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To Make an Irish Stew, or Hunter's Pie

A baked mutton and potato pie seasoned with sea salt and served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,456 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

To Make an Irish Stew, or Hunter's Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mutton

  1. Cut the mutton into chops and season well.

  2. Place the mutton in a stew pan and braise for 30 minutes.

Build and bake the pie

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender, then mash and season them.

  2. Butter a mold and line it with the mashed potatoes.

  3. Add the braised mutton into the mold and bake for 30 minutes.

  4. Cut a hole in the top and pour in some good gravy.

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.

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. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  2. Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Mutton + potatotop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together293 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through slow braising.
Potatoes
Form the mashed potato crust that holds and encloses the meat.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the mashed potato lining.
Good gravy
Adds moisture and savoury flavor to the filling after baking.

The step that matters

Cut a hole in the top and pour in some good gravy. Pouring gravy into a sealed pie can make it soggy or leak out, so a vent lets liquid reach the filling. Adding it after baking keeps the gravy hot and the potato crust intact.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, butter):

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Onionfits about as well
  4. Shallotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, 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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