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To Boil Corned Beef

A pot of corned beef boiled with water, potatoes, turnips, and cabbage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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To Boil Corned Beef

Why it works: Turnip and cabbage 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 ↓

To Boil Corned Beef

Ingredients

Directions

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

  2. Heat the pot slowly and bring it to a gentle boil.

  3. Skim off any grease that rises to the surface.

  4. If desired, add peeled potatoes, turnips, and cabbage to the pot.

  5. Boil for about 20 minutes for each pound of meat.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Potato + turniptop 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. Potato + cabbagetop 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
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long gentle simmering.
Potatoes
Add starch that softens during boiling, thickening the cooking liquid slightly and adding body.
Turnips
Hold their shape while boiling and add a mild, slightly sweet flavour to the pot.
Cabbage
Becomes tender in the simmering liquid and absorbs some of the seasoned broth.

The step that matters

Bring the pot to a gentle boil. Heating slowly and keeping the liquid at a gentle simmer, not a hard boil, keeps the meat tender and prevents it from toughening and breaking apart.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

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