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New England Boiled Dinner

A boiled dinner of corned beef with carrots, beets, turnips, celery, and onions, served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

New England Boiled Dinner

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Remove the bone from the corned beef and tie the meat tightly.

  2. Place the meat in a deep pot and cover it with water.

  3. Add ½ teaspoon coarse sea salt and ¼ teaspoon black pepper, then boil quickly, removing all scum.

Cook the dinner

  1. Once no more scum rises, add the carrots, beets, yellow turnip, white turnips, celery, and onions.

  2. Simmer slowly for 2 hours.

Serve

  1. When done, place the meat in the center of a platter and arrange the vegetables around it.

  2. Pour a little gravy over the meat and vegetables, and serve additional gravy in a boat with boiled potatoes.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 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 protein, which becomes tender through long, slow simmering.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and color to the pot and the platter.
Beets
Add earthy sweetness and a deep red color that tints the surrounding vegetables.
Turnips
Contribute a mild, slightly peppery flavor and firm texture after simmering.
Celery
Adds a mild, savory aroma that flavors the cooking liquid.
Onions
Add savory depth and sweetness to the broth as they soften.

The step that matters

Removing the scum. Skimming foam as the water first boils removes impurities that would otherwise cloud the broth and taint the flavor of the meat and vegetables.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, carrot, turnip, celery. 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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