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Irish Mutton Stew

A hearty stew of mutton chops simmered with carrots, turnips, onions, and potatoes in salted water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip 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 Mutton Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place mutton chops in a stew pan and cover with boiling water.

  2. Add salt, pepper, carrots, turnips, and onions.

Cook the stew

  1. Cook for 20 minutes.

  2. Add potatoes and more water if needed, then simmer for another 20 minutes.

Serve

  1. Stir thoroughly and serve hot.

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. Carrot + turniptop 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. Turnip + oniontop 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

Mutton chops
Connective tissue breaks down slowly in liquid, turning the meat tender and enriching the broth.
Potatoes
Their starch softens and partly thickens the broth, giving the stew body.
Onions
As they cook they turn soft and sweet, adding depth of flavour to the broth.
Carrots
Cooking brings out their natural sweetness, balancing the savoury meat and broth.
Turnips
They soften during cooking and add a mild, slightly peppery sweetness to the stew.

The step that matters

Simmer after adding the potatoes. Keeping the stew at a gentle simmer rather than a hard boil lets the mutton become tender without toughening or breaking apart. Adding water when needed keeps the chops covered so they cook evenly and the potatoes do not dry out or scorch.

Swap the onion

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

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

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