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Boiled Corned Beef

A boiled corned beef prepared with spices, vegetables, and black peppercorns, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Boiled Corned Beef

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 ↓

Boiled Corned Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Wash the beef and trim off excess fat.

  2. Rub the inside with black pepper, mace, and ground cloves, or omit spices if preferred.

  3. Roll up the meat, tie it into shape, and wrap it in a cloth.

Simmer

  1. Place the meat in a saucepan with tepid water and bring to a boil.

  2. Remove any scum, then add carrots, turnip, onion, celery seed, and the muslin bag of peppercorns.

  3. Cover and let the meat simmer slowly for 5 hours.

Press and glaze

  1. If serving cold, leave the meat in the cooking liquid until it cools, then tighten the cloth and place it between two baking sheets with weights overnight.

  2. The next morning, remove the cloth, wipe the meat, trim it, and coat with glaze.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Silverside of beef
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender and sliceable during long, slow simmering.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, aromatic heat that flavours the meat's exterior after it is rubbed on.
Mace
Contributes a warm, aromatic flavour to the rolled meat.
Ground cloves
Adds a strong, warm aroma that complements the brined beef.

The step that matters

Simmering the meat slowly. A gentle simmer keeps the liquid below a hard boil, so the meat's connective tissue softens gradually without the fibres toughening and drying out. Boiling vigorously makes the outer meat tough and the liquid cloudy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, clove, carrot, turnip, onion, celery):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, clove, carrot, turnip, onion, 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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