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Irish Stew

A simple stew of potatoes, onions, carrot, and parsley simmered in water with butter, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Irish Stew

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Irish Stew

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pot, combine water, potatoes, onions, carrot, and parsley.

  2. Add butter, pepper, and salt.

  3. Boil until the vegetables are tender but not mushy.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  4. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide starch that softens during boiling, thickening the broth and giving the stew its body.
Onions
Release sweetness and savory flavor into the broth as they cook down.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, rounding out the flavor of the broth.

The step that matters

Boiling until tender but not mushy. Potatoes keep cooking after they are removed from heat, and continued boiling breaks down their starch cells too far, turning them mushy. Checking for tenderness before the pot leaves the heat helps them hold their shape.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Turnipfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, carrot, parsley, butter, 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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