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Boiled Dinner

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsnip and turnip 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

Cook the beef

  1. Wash the corned beef in cold water.

  2. Place the corned beef in a pot with enough cold water to cover it.

  3. Bring the pot to a boil.

  4. Skim off any foam.

  5. Simmer slowly for about 40 minutes per pound until tender.

  6. Add the turnips, carrots, and parsnips about 1 hour before the meat is done.

  7. Add the potatoes 30 minutes before the meat is done.

Cook the cabbage and beets

  1. Tie the cabbage in cheesecloth.

  2. Cook the tied cabbage in a separate pot with some of the beef broth for 1 hour or until tender.

  3. Cook the beets separately in boiling water.

  4. Plunge the beets into cold water.

  5. Rub off the skins of the beets.

Serve

  1. Serve the corned beef in the center of a platter with the vegetables arranged around it.

  2. Serve the cabbage and beets in separate dishes.

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. Parsnip + turniptop 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. Turnip + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + potatotop 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 as it simmers slowly in water.
Potatoes
Absorb flavour from the simmering broth and hold their shape while becoming soft.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness to the broth and the finished dish as they soften.
Cabbage
Soaks up flavour from the beef broth and becomes tender when cooked slowly.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly rather than boil. A rapid boil toughens the meat's connective tissue and can break up the vegetables. A gentle simmer lets collagen slowly soften into gelatin, keeping the beef tender and juicy.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, parsnip, 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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