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Real Irish Stew

A hearty stew of mutton, onions, and potatoes simmered slowly in stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Real Irish Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mutton

  1. Cut the mutton into neat pieces, removing some fat.

  2. Season the mutton with salt and pepper.

  3. Place the mutton in a saucepan and cover with water.

  4. Simmer gently for 30 minutes.

  5. Pour the cooking liquid into a basin.

  6. Cool it in cold water until the fat rises and can be removed.

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Boil the potatoes for 15 minutes.

  2. Peel and slice the potatoes.

  3. Blanch the onions.

  4. Peel and slice the onions into rings.

Layer and simmer

  1. Layer the sliced vegetables in a pan.

  2. Add a layer of meat.

  3. Repeat the layers.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

  5. Pour the reserved cooking liquid over the layers.

  6. Add more water or stock if needed to cover.

  7. Cover the pan tightly.

  8. Simmer for several hours, ensuring it never boils hard.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Mutton + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together936 recipes

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

  5. Potato + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together786 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the rich meat flavour and tender texture after long, gentle simmering.
Potatoes
Thicken the stew as their starch softens and absorbs the cooking liquid.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften and mellow during slow cooking.

The step that matters

Simmer gently without boiling hard. A hard boil toughens the meat proteins and breaks up the potatoes, while gentle simmering lets collagen slowly soften into tender meat and keeps the stew clear.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Carrotfits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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