Name: Boiled Dinner
Ingredients: 6 pounds corned beef; 1 small head of cabbage; 3 quarts yellow turnips, sliced; 3 medium-sized beets; 12 good-sized potatoes; 4 carrots; 4 parsnips; salt; butter

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 Dinner

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

Wash the corned beef thoroughly.
Place the beef in a large kettle and cover with hot water.
Cook the beef until tender.

Cook the vegetables

In a separate pot, boil the cabbage, turnips, beets, potatoes, carrots, and parsnips until tender.
Season each vegetable with salt and butter 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.

Turnip + parsniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together590 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,097 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together897 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Potato + carrottop 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: Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle simmering in water.
Potatoes: Starchy body that absorbs the cooking liquid and makes the plate filling.
Cabbage: Adds mild sweetness and moisture as it softens while boiling.
Beets: Lend natural sweetness and an earthy color that bleeds into the other vegetables.

Swap the cabbage

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

Leekfits better
Beetrootfits better
Chivefits better
Cabbagethe original

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