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Boiled Dinner

A boiled dinner of meat and assorted vegetables cooked together in salted water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and parsnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 590 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Boiled Dinner

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the meat

  1. Wash the meat well and place it in enough boiling water to just cover it.

  2. Once it boils, reduce the heat to maintain a slow boil.

  3. Cook the meat until almost tender, then skim the surface.

  4. Use a plate or saucer turned upside down in the kettle to prevent the meat from burning.

Add the vegetables

  1. Add the cabbage, turnips, and potatoes to the kettle.

  2. If desired, add parsnips, carrots, or rutabagas.

  3. Boil everything together until thoroughly cooked, adding a little salt before removing from heat.

Serve

  1. Serve the vegetables in separate dishes, followed by the meat.

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. Turnip + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together590 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

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

  3. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsnip + rutabagatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together74 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Cabbage + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Meat
Provides the main savory flavor as it simmers slowly in the water.
Cabbage
Softens as it cooks, adding sweetness and a mild, tender texture.
Potatoes
Break down as they cook, thickening the broth and giving the dish body.
Turnips
Turn tender while keeping a mildly sweet, earthy flavor.

The step that matters

Keep the boil slow and the meat covered. A rolling boil toughens meat and can break vegetables apart, while a gentle simmer keeps the meat tender and the broth clear. Keeping the meat just covered and the surface skimmed also helps the broth stay clean.

“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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