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Irish Stew with Oysters

A stew of mutton, potatoes, onions, and oysters simmered in white stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Irish Stew with Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the mutton into neat pieces.

  2. Peel and slice the potatoes.

  3. Shred the onion.

Cook

  1. In a pot, layer potatoes, mutton, onion, and seasonings, repeating until all ingredients are used.

  2. Pour in the white stock.

  3. Cook gently over low heat for 2 hours, shaking the pot frequently.

  4. Add the oysters and cook for an additional 5 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve hot in a dish.

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

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

  2. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Mutton + oystertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together317 recipes

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

  5. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the rich meat flavour and tender texture after slow, gentle cooking.
Potatoes
Absorb the stock and thicken the stew as their starch softens.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour that blends into the rich stock.
White stock
Supplies the liquid that cooks the layers and forms the base of the stew.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness that mellows during the long cooking.

The step that matters

Add the oysters and cook for an additional 5 minutes. Oysters are delicate and overcook quickly, becoming rubbery and shrinking. Adding them near the end, after the long gentle simmer, keeps them tender and plump.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Asparagusfits about as well
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, oyster, potato, 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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