Name: A Good Boiled Dinner
Ingredients: meat (corned beef or fresh meat); cabbage (cut in quarters); turnips (sliced); whole potatoes; coarse sea salt (if using fresh meat)

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

Four hours before serving, place the meat in a kettle of boiling water, enough to cover it slightly.
Once boiling, skim the surface carefully, then reduce heat and let it boil slowly.
One hour before serving, add the cabbage and turnips.
Half an hour later, add the whole potatoes.
If using corned beef, no salt is needed; if using fresh meat, add salt when adding the potatoes.

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.

Cabbage + turniptop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together897 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Turnip + potatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together562 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Cabbage + potatotop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together275 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Meat + potatotop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together786 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Meat + turniptop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together930 recipes

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