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Corned Beef and Cabbage

A boiled corned beef brisket served with cabbage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and cabbage work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 872 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Corned Beef and Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Wash the corned beef in cold water.

  2. If it is too salty, soak it in cold water for 1 hour.

  3. Place the beef in a pot and cover it with cold water.

  4. Bring to a boil, skimming off any foam that rises to the surface.

  5. Reduce heat and simmer slowly for 3 hours.

Prepare and cook the cabbage

  1. Trim the outer leaves from the cabbage, cut off the stalk, and quarter or halve it if small.

  2. Soak the cabbage in cold water for 30 minutes, shaking it to remove dirt, then drain.

  3. Once the beef is skimmed, add the cabbage to the pot and cook slowly for 2.5 hours.

  4. If the water level gets low, add a little boiling water, but ensure there's not too much water left when done.

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. Beef + cabbagetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together872 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + cabbagetop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + beeftop 37% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar cured corned beef brisket
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, slow simmering.
Dutch flat head cabbage
Becomes tender and sweet as it cooks slowly in the seasoned broth.

The step that matters

Simmering the beef slowly. A gentle simmer keeps the muscle fibres from tightening and toughening. A hard boil makes the meat dry and stringy, so keep the liquid at a low, steady simmer throughout.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, beef. 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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