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Irish Stew with Dumplings

A lamb stew with carrots, turnips, onions, potatoes, and dumplings, thickened with flour.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamb

  1. Wipe and cut lamb into pieces.

  2. Put lamb in a kettle and cover with boiling water.

Stew

  1. Cook slowly for 2 hours or until tender.

  2. After 1 hour, add carrot, turnip, and onion.

  3. Fifteen minutes before serving, add parboiled potatoes.

  4. Thicken with flour diluted in cold water.

  5. Season with salt and pepper, and serve with dumplings.

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

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

  3. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

  4. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb
Provides the rich meat that becomes tender through slow, long cooking.
Potatoes
Break down partly in the broth, adding body and starch that helps thicken the stew.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth, lightly body-rich gravy.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and holds its shape during slow cooking.
Turnip
Adds mild sweetness and a firm texture that holds up during simmering.
Onion
Adds savory depth and aroma to the broth as it cooks.

The step that matters

Thicken with flour diluted in cold water. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps before it can disperse. Mixing it with cold water first creates a smooth slurry that thickens the stew evenly when stirred in.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, carrot, turnip, potato, flour, pepper):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, carrot, turnip, potato, flour, 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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