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Irish Stew

A hearty stew of mutton or lamb with potatoes, carrot, tomato, celery, parsley, peas, and a cornstarch‑thickened milk sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Irish Stew

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Irish Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the meat

  1. Heat the butter or beef dripping in a saucepan.

  2. Brown the sliced onion in the heated butter.

  3. Add the mutton or lamb pieces to the saucepan. Turn the pieces until coated and slightly browned.

  4. Pour in enough cold water to cover the meat by 1 inch.

  5. Cover the saucepan tightly.

  6. Stew for 2 hours until very tender.

Add the vegetables

  1. Cook the sliced potatoes, diced carrot, chopped tomato, minced celery, and chopped parsley in another pot for 15 minutes.

  2. Drain the cooked vegetables and discard the water.

  3. Add the parboiled vegetables to the stew.

  4. Season the stew with salt and pepper.

  5. Cook gently for another 30 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the meat and vegetables with a slotted spoon.

  2. Arrange the meat and vegetables on a flat dish.

  3. Add the boiled peas and hot milk mixed with cornstarch to the saucepan. Cook for 5 minutes.

  4. Pour the mixture over the meat and vegetables.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  3. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  4. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

  5. Potato + tomatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 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

Mutton or lamb
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, slow stewing.
Potatoes
Soften during stewing and thicken the broth as their starch releases.
Onion
Browning in butter builds savory depth and sweetness for the stew base.
Butter or beef dripping
Fat for browning the onion and meat, adding richness and flavor.
Peas
Add sweetness, color, and a soft texture to the finished dish.
Cornstarch
Thickens the hot milk, giving the final mixture a smoother body.

The step that matters

Brown the meat and onion before stewing. Browning creates Maillard reactions that add deep, savory flavor. Pale meat stews into a flatter, greyer-tasting broth.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, butter, onion, meat, potato, carrot, celery):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Turnipfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, onion, meat, potato, carrot, celery. 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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