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To Boil a Leg of Pork

A pork leg is salted, soaked, boiled, skimmed, and served with peas and turnips.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,874 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Boil a Leg of Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Salt the leg of pork for 8 to 10 days.

  2. Weigh the pork.

  3. Soak it in cold water for 30 minutes.

Boil

  1. Use enough water to cover the pork.

  2. Boil the pork for 15 minutes per pound, plus an additional 30 minutes.

  3. Skim the water as soon as it starts boiling.

  4. Continue to skim frequently.

  5. Save some broth for making pea-soup.

  6. Optionally, boil the pork in a floured cloth for a delicate appearance.

Serve

  1. Serve with pease-pudding and turnips.

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. Flour + turniptop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Peas + turniptop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,350 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pork + turniptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,358 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  4. Pork + peastop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,589 recipes

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

  5. Flour + peastop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,837 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork leg
Forms the main meat of the dish, and its long salting seasons it through.
Peas
Form the starchy base of the pease-pudding served alongside the pork.
Turnips
Add a mild sweetness and soft texture as the accompanying vegetable.

The step that matters

Skim the water as soon as it starts boiling. Boiling pork releases foam made of coagulated proteins and impurities. Skimming it early and often keeps the broth clear and the meat clean-tasting, and it also keeps the broth usable for the pea-soup.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, flour, 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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