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Boiled Dinner

A boiled corned beef served with carrots, parsnips, turnips, cabbage, potatoes, and beets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Dinner

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Wash the corned beef in cold water and place it in a pot with enough cold water to cover it.

  2. Bring to a boil, then skim off any foam.

  3. Simmer slowly for about 40 minutes per pound until tender.

Cook the vegetables

  1. Add the turnips, carrots, and parsnips one hour before the meat is done.

  2. Add the potatoes half an hour before the meat is done.

  3. Tie the cabbage in cheesecloth and cook it in a separate pot with some of the beef broth for one hour or until tender.

  4. Cook the beets separately in boiling water, then plunge them into cold water and rub off the skins.

Serve

  1. Serve the corned beef in the center of a platter with the vegetables arranged around it, and serve the cabbage and beets in separate dishes.

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. Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Corned beef
Fat streaks through the meat keep it moist and tender during slow simmering.
Potatoes
Starch absorbs cooking liquid and becomes soft and fluffy as it cooks through.
Cabbage
Cooks down to a soft, sweet texture in the flavorful beef broth.
Beets
Hold their deep color and sweetness when cooked whole in boiling water.

The step that matters

Simmer the beef slowly. A rapid boil toughens the meat's connective tissue and makes it stringy. A gentle simmer lets collagen slowly break down into gelatin, so the beef turns tender and moist.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, parsnip, turnip, potato):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, parsnip, turnip, potato. 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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