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To Boil Salt Meat

A boiled salt meat dish with beef, pork, cabbage, turnips, potatoes, and optional dumplings or beets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

To Boil Salt Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Wash the beef.

  2. Place the beef in a pot with cold water over low heat.

  3. Skim off any scum that rises.

  4. Let the beef boil for about 3 hours.

  5. Wash the pork.

  6. Scrape the rind from the pork.

  7. Place the pork in another pot with the red pepper.

Add the vegetables and serve

  1. Cut the cabbage into quarters.

  2. Wash the cabbage.

  3. Soak the cabbage in cold water until 1 hour before dinner.

  4. Add the cabbage to the pot to boil.

  5. Ten minutes before serving, add the turnips.

  6. Twenty-five to thirty minutes before serving, add the peeled potatoes.

  7. If desired, boil Indian dumplings for 20 minutes.

  8. If using beets or squashes, add them to the pot with the beef.

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 + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pork + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Pepper + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

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

Beef
Slow boiling in cold water tenderizes the meat and releases its flavor into the broth.
Pork
Its fat and rind add richness and body to the broth as it cooks.
Cabbage
Becomes tender and sweet as it simmers in the seasoned broth.
Potatoes
Starch thickens the broth slightly and softens into a creamy, filling texture.
Turnips
Absorb the broth's flavor and add a mild, slightly sweet bite.

The step that matters

Skimming off the scum. Foam that rises while the beef first heats contains impurities and coagulated proteins. Removing it keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Onionfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, pepper, 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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