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Boiled Leg of Pork

A large leg of pork is salted, cured, then boiled for several hours, optionally with root vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and carrot are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,772 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Boiled Leg of Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Cure

  1. Rub the leg of pork well with coarse sea salt and let it sit in the salt for 7 to 10 days, turning and rubbing it daily.

  2. Soak the pork in cold water for an hour before cooking to improve the color.

Boil and serve

  1. Place the pork in a large pot and cover it with cold water.

  2. Bring the water to a gradual boil, skimming off any scum that rises.

  3. Simmer gently for about 3 hours after the water boils, until the pork is tender.

  4. Optionally add carrots, turnips, or parsnips to the pot to cook with the pork and use them as a garnish.

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. Pork + carrottop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,772 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pork leg
Provides the meat that becomes tender and juicy through long, gentle simmering.
Coarse sea salt
Salts the meat during the long cure, seasoning it and drawing out moisture.

The step that matters

Bringing the water to a gradual boil and skimming. Heating slowly and skimming off the scum that rises keeps the broth clearer and prevents impurities from cooking back into the meat. Simmering gently rather than boiling hard keeps the meat tender instead of tight and stringy.

“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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