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Irish Stew

A hearty stew of mutton, onions, and optional root vegetables simmered in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

Prepare and boil

  1. Sprinkle the mutton pieces with salt and pepper, then coat them in flour.

  2. Place the mutton in a flat saucepan and cover with cold water.

  3. Bring to a boil, skimming off any scum.

Simmer

  1. Add the onions and optional vegetables.

  2. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer gently for 1 hour.

  3. Add the yam or sweet potatoes and simmer for another 45 minutes, keeping the saucepan covered.

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. Yam + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together12 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Supplies the meat, which becomes tender as its connective tissue breaks down during long simmering.
Flour
Coats the meat and thickens the cooking liquid into a light, cohesive stew.
Yam or sweet potatoes
Starch softens and thickens the stew while adding a mild natural sweetness.
Onions
Release sweetness and savory aroma into the broth as they cook slowly.

The step that matters

Simmer gently rather than boiling hard. Gentle simmering keeps the meat tender and the broth clear. A hard boil toughens muscle fibres and churns fat and scum into the liquid, making the stew cloudy.

Swap the carrot

The recipe marks carrot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, onion, yam, flour, pepper, turnip, parsley):

  1. Okrafits better
  2. Parsnipfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, onion, yam, flour, pepper, turnip, parsley. 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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