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Boiled Belly of Pork

A boiled pork belly mixed with butter, pepper, salt, egg yolks, and vegetables, served with broth and peas-pudding.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsnip and turnip 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 Belly of Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the pork

  1. Boil the belly of pork with the leg for about 1.5 hours.

  2. Remove the belly.

  3. Place the belly in a quart-size stewpan, untied. Smash the belly smooth with a pestle or rolling pin.

  4. Add butter, pepper, salt, and egg yolks. Mix well. Tie the mixture tightly.

  5. Return the mixture to boil with the leg of pork.

Serve

  1. Boil vegetables with the leg for 1 hour before serving.

  2. Arrange the pork on a dish with parsnips, turnips, and carrots around it. Pour some broth around the pork.

  3. Serve with peas-pudding and two 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.

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. Parsnip + turniptop 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. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + parsniptop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,109 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

Belly of pork
Provides the rich, fatty meat that forms the main body of the dish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and keeping the mixture moist.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and help it set into a firm, sliceable texture when heated.

The step that matters

Tie the mixture tightly. A loose tie lets the mixture spread and lose its shape while boiling. Firm wrapping holds the egg yolk and butter mixture together so it sets into a compact form.

Swap the parsnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, butter, pepper, egg, turnip, carrot):

  1. Leekfits about as well
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Parsnipthe original
  4. Capsicumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, butter, pepper, egg, turnip, carrot. 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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