Skip to main content
Main

Pork, Leg Of, Boiled

A boiled pork leg seasoned with salt and cooked slowly with optional root vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Pork, Leg Of, Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Cure the pork

  1. Choose a small, compact leg of pork that is not too fatty.

  2. If not already salted, rub the pork with coarse sea salt and place it in a clean, dry earthen pan.

  3. Repeat the salting process daily for 10 days, turning the meat each time.

Prepare and boil

  1. When ready to cook, saw off the shank bone and wash the leg well.

  2. Place the pork in a saucepan, cover with cold water, and bring to a slow boil.

  3. Skim the surface and simmer gently for about 2 hours until cooked through.

  4. If desired, add carrots, turnips, and parsnips to the pot once the water is boiling.

Finish

  1. For better appearance, score the skin into small squares or diamonds and remove alternate squares.

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. Turnip + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together590 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + peastop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,994 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Turnip + peastop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,350 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

Pork leg
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Coarse sea salt
Cures the meat over days, seasoning it and firming its texture.

The step that matters

Bring to a slow boil, then simmer gently. A hard, rapid boil toughens the meat fibres and can break the surface. Gentle simmering keeps the pork tender and juicy as it cooks through.

Swap the peas

The recipe marks peas as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, carrot, turnip, parsnip):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, carrot, turnip, parsnip. 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.

You might also like

Green PeasGreen Peas229 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipes