Name: Boiled Salt Meat
Ingredients: salt meat; fresh cold water; cooked carrot; cooked turnip; dumplings; greens

Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Boiled Salt Meat

Ingredients

Directions

If the meat is very salty, soak it overnight in cold water.
Bring the soaked meat very slowly to a boil in fresh cold water.
Simmer the meat slowly until tender, allowing 30 to 35 minutes per pound based on thickness.
Skim frequently while simmering.
Once tender, serve with cooked carrot, turnip, dumplings, and greens.

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.

Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Meat + carrottop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,905 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Meat + turniptop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together930 recipes

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