Skip to main content
Main

A Good, Boiled Dinner

A boiled dinner of meat, cabbage, potatoes, and turnips seasoned with sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cabbage and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 897 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

A Good, Boiled Dinner

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the meat

  1. Place the meat in a pot and cover it with water.

  2. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to maintain a slow simmer.

  3. Cook the meat until almost tender.

  4. Skim the surface of the broth to remove impurities.

Add the vegetables and serve

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

  2. Continue boiling until all ingredients are cooked through.

  3. Add salt shortly before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Potato + turniptop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cabbage + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together275 recipes

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

  4. Meat + potatotop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together786 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Meat + turniptop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together930 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Meat
Provides the main protein and flavour, enriching the broth as it simmers.
Potatoes
Absorb broth as they cook, becoming soft and starchy to give body to the dish.
Cabbage
Turns sweet and tender as it simmers slowly in the broth.

The step that matters

Skim the surface of the broth. Foam and impurities rise to the surface as the meat cooks. Removing them keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting rather than scummy or bitter.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, potato, turnip. 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.

More boiled dinner recipes

Corned Beef 19New England 11 See all 21 →

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesRed CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipesStewed CabbageStewed Cabbage58 recipes