Name: Boiled Dinner
Ingredients: 50 to 75 grams corned beef; 100 grams cabbage; 100 grams other vegetable; horseradish (optional); sour pickles (optional); seasonings: mint, capers, curry, tarragon vinegar, onion, bay leaf, cloves

Why it works: Horseradish and capers share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 82 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Boiled Dinner

Ingredients

50 to 75 grams corned beef
100 grams cabbage
100 grams other vegetable
horseradish (optional)
sour pickles (optional)
seasonings: mint, capers, curry, tarragon vinegar, onion, bay leaf, cloves

Directions

Boil the corned beef in water until tender.
Add cabbage and the other vegetable to the pot and cook until they are tender.
Season with horseradish, pickles, or other seasonings as desired.
Serve the corned beef 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.

Horseradish + caperstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together82 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Capers + tarragontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together379 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Cabbage + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together481 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Horseradish + tarragontop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together73 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Horseradish + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,784 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Corned beef: Provides the main protein and savory, salty flavor; simmering makes it tender.
Cabbage: Adds bulk and mild sweetness as it softens during simmering.

Swap the horseradish

The recipe marks horseradish as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, cabbage, mint, capers, tarragon, vinegar, onion):

Mustardfits better
Shallotfits better
Chivefits about as well
Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, cabbage, mint, capers, tarragon, vinegar, onion. 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.