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Irish Stew

A stew of mutton, onions, and potatoes simmered until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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

Prepare

  1. Cut the mutton into serving pieces and trim off excess fat.

  2. Cover the onions with boiling water for a few minutes, then slice them into rings.

  3. Boil the potatoes for 15 minutes, then drain and set aside.

Cook

  1. In a pot, layer the mutton, potatoes, and onions, adding water to cover.

  2. Simmer until the meat is tender and the flavors meld, about 1.5 to 2 hours.

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. Mutton + oniontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,531 recipes

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

  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

Neck of mutton
Provides the main meat, whose connective tissue softens into tender meat during long simmering.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften and release their flavor into the broth.
Potatoes
Thicken the stew slightly as their starch breaks down, and absorb flavor from the broth.

The step that matters

Simmer until the meat is tender. Mutton neck is tough and needs a long, gentle simmer so its collagen breaks down into gelatin. Boiling hard can toughen the meat and break up the potatoes.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Leekfits about as well
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Turnipfits less well
  4. Chivefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, onion. 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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