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Irish Vegetable Stew

A hearty stew of potatoes, carrots, turnip, onions, and haricot beans seasoned with butter, stock, MARMITE, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 Vegetable Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the haricot beans in salted water for several hours, then boil for one hour.

  2. Wash, peel, and slice the potatoes, carrots, and turnip.

  3. Peel and scald the onions, then drain and slice them.

Make the stew

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan and fry the onions for a few minutes without browning.

  2. Add the sliced vegetables, season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg, then add the partly cooked beans.

  3. Moisten the stew with 2 cups of stock and 2 teaspoons of MARMITE.

  4. Bring to a boil, removing any scum that rises, then let it simmer until the vegetables are tender. Shake the pan occasionally to prevent burning. Add more diluted MARMITE gravy if too dry.

Serve

  1. Serve hot, garnished with chopped parsley or chives.

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. Beans + turniptop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together400 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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. Beans + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,443 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Break down into a soft, thickening body as the stew simmers.
Haricot beans
Add body and creaminess, holding their shape while the vegetables soften.
Spanish onions
Build sweetness and savoury depth when gently fried before the stew is moistened.
Butter
Carries flavour from the onions and enriches the stew with fat.
Marmite
Adds concentrated savoury, salty depth that seasons the stock and gravy.
Stock
Provides the liquid that cooks the vegetables and forms the gravy.

The step that matters

Shake the pan occasionally. The stew is thick and sits on the base of the pan, so starch and sugars can scorch and stick. Gentle shaking and adding diluted gravy keep it moist and prevent burning.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, beans, carrot, turnip, onion, 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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