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Boiled Dinner

A boiled dinner of corned beef with beets, cabbage, turnips, and potatoes.

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

Boiled Dinner

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the corned beef

  1. Put the corned beef in a pot and cover with water.

  2. Boil for about 4 hours until tender.

  3. Remove the beef.

  4. Keep it warm until serving.

  5. Skim the fat from the cooking liquid.

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Boil the beets in a separate kettle until tender.

  2. Wash all the vegetables.

  3. Cut the cabbage into quarters.

  4. Peel the turnips and slice them into pieces less than 1 inch thick.

  5. Peel the potatoes.

  6. Tie each vegetable, except the beets, in a square of cheesecloth.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the turnips to the pot first, then the cabbage.

  2. Add the potatoes half an hour before serving.

  3. Drain each vegetable carefully.

  4. Serve.

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. Turnip + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  5. Beef + turniptop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,940 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

Corned beef
Long simmering breaks down its connective tissue, making the meat tender and easy to slice.
Potatoes
Their starch softens during cooking, giving the dish a soft, filling texture.
Cabbage
Turns mild and sweet as it cooks in the seasoned liquid.
Beets
Give the dish its deep red color and a mild, earthy sweetness.

The step that matters

Add the potatoes half an hour before serving. Potatoes are starchy and cook quickly. Adding them too early lets their starch break down further, so they turn mushy and fall apart before the dish reaches the table.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

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