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Boiled Leg of Pork

A large leg of pork is salted, pickled, then boiled with optional root vegetables until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Leg of Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Cure the pork

  1. Rub the leg of pork well with coarse sea salt.

  2. Let it sit in pickle for 7 to 10 days, turning and rubbing it daily.

Soak and boil

  1. An hour before cooking, soak the pork in cold water to improve the color.

  2. Place the pork in a large pot and cover it with cold water.

  3. Gradually bring the water to a boil, skimming off any scum that rises.

  4. Simmer gently until the pork is tender, about 3 hours.

  5. Do not let the water boil rapidly to prevent the knuckle from falling apart.

  6. Optionally, add carrots, turnips, or parsnips to the pot for the last part of cooking.

Serve

  1. Serve garnished with the 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. Turnip + parsniptop 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. Pork + turniptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,358 recipes

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

  5. Pork + carrottop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,772 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

Leg of pork
Is the main cut; long salting and gentle simmering make the meat tender and well seasoned.
Coarse sea salt
Cures the meat, drawing out moisture and seasoning it through the pickling period.

The step that matters

Keep the water at a gentle simmer. A rapid boil toughens the meat's outer layers and can break the knuckle apart before the inside becomes tender. Gentle heat cooks the pork evenly and keeps it intact.

Swap the carrot

The recipe marks carrot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, turnip, parsnip):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Carrotthe original
  4. Lettucefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, turnip, parsnip. 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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