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Boiled Dinner

A boiled meal of corned beef with cabbage, turnips, potatoes, green beans, beets, and salted water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and turnip 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 ↓

Boiled Dinner

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the corned beef and place it in a large pot of cold water. Cover tightly.

  2. Quarter the cabbage, halve the turnips, and peel the potatoes.

  3. String the green beans and wash the beets carefully.

Cook

  1. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to simmer gently.

  2. Cook for 30 minutes per pound from the time the water begins to boil.

  3. Boil small turnips and beets for 1 to 2 hours; large ones may take longer.

  4. Cook green beans for 2 to 3 hours and potatoes for 30 to 45 minutes.

  5. Cook the cabbage in boiling salted water as directed.

  6. If desired, remove some liquid from the pot and add it to the cabbage water.

Serve

  1. Serve the vegetables in separate dishes or garnish the beef with smaller varieties.

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. Cabbage + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Potato + green beanstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Turnip + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  5. Cabbage + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together275 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

Corned beef
Supplies the main protein and savory, salty flavor as it simmers slowly.
Potatoes
Absorb the cooking liquid and become soft and starchy, adding body to the meal.
Cabbage
Turns sweet and tender when boiled, mellowing its sulfurous aroma.
Beets
Hold their color and add natural sweetness and earthy flavor after long cooking.

The step that matters

Simmer gently instead of boiling. A hard rolling boil toughens the meat's proteins and can break up the vegetables, so keeping the liquid at a gentle simmer gives tender results.

Swap the green beans

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Green beansthe original

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