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To Hake an Irish Stew, or Hunter's Pib

A baked dish of mutton chops and mashed potatoes topped with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,456 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

To Hake an Irish Stew, or Hunter's Pib

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Cut the mutton into chops.

  2. Boil the potatoes until tender, then mash them and season.

Assemble and bake

  1. Butter a mold and line it with the mashed potatoes.

  2. Add the mutton into the mold.

  3. Bake for 30 minutes at 400°F (200°C).

Serve

  1. Cut a hole in the top and add gravy before serving.

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. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Mutton + potatotop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together293 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the main meat filling, which becomes tender and savory as it bakes.
Potatoes
Form the mashed crust that holds the filling and browns on top in the oven.
Butter
Greases the mold so the potato layer releases cleanly and adds richness.
Gravy
Adds moisture and savory flavor to the filling when poured in before serving.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Onionfits about as well
  4. Shallotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter. 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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