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Old-fashioned Boiled Dinner

A boiled dinner of corned beef, salt pork, and assorted root vegetables served with horseradish or sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Old-fashioned Boiled Dinner

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the meat and vegetables

  1. Place the corned beef in a large kettle of cold water.

  2. At 10 o'clock, add the salt pork.

  3. At 10 o'clock, add the beets.

  4. If the beets are large, add them an hour earlier.

  5. Wash the carrots thoroughly.

  6. If large, add the carrots now.

  7. If small, add the carrots with the potatoes.

  8. At 11 o'clock, add the peeled turnips.

  9. At 11 o'clock, add the parsnips.

  10. At 11 o'clock, add the cabbage cut into quarters.

  11. Add the peeled potatoes.

  12. Allow everything to boil for 30 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Once cooked, place the beets in cold water to remove the skin.

  2. Cut the beets into 3 or 4 pieces.

  3. Drain the cabbage and serve it in a vegetable dish.

  4. Serve the dinner with grated horseradish or any bottled sauce.

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. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  5. Turnip + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 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

Corned beef
Provides the main meat and savory flavor as it simmers slowly in the water.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory depth to the cooking liquid and the vegetables.
Potatoes
Absorb the seasoned broth and add starchy body to the plate.
Beets
Contribute sweetness and a deep color to the dish.

The step that matters

Timing the vegetables. Vegetables cook at different rates, so adding them at staggered times keeps each one tender without overcooking. Large beets need an earlier start because their dense flesh takes longer to soften.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

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