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Leg of Pork Corned and Boiled

A leg of pork seasoned with coarse sea salt and sugar, left to cure for three days, then boiled with vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,843 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Leg of Pork Corned and Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Cure the pork

  1. Mix salt and sugar together, then rub the mixture all over the meat.

  2. Let it stand for three days, turning it daily.

Boil and serve

  1. In a pot, bring enough water to a boil to cover the meat.

  2. Add the meat to the boiling water, adding more water if it boils away.

  3. Cook until the meat is tender.

  4. Serve with vegetables.

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. Pork + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,843 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + tomatotop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,667 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + porktop 37% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,579 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

Leg of pork
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and sliceable during long, gentle cooking.
Coarse sea salt
Cures the meat by drawing out moisture and seasoning it deeply over the three days.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the salt and softens the savory flavor of the cured meat.

The step that matters

Keep the meat covered with boiling water. If the water boils away, the exposed meat cooks unevenly and dries out. Keeping it submerged holds heat steady so the connective tissue can slowly break down and the meat turns tender.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, pork. 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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