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Boiled Meats

A dish of boiled veal, lamb, and pork, each cooked in water with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lamb and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 623 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Boiled Meats

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and tin the copper pot.

  2. Place the meat in cold water.

  3. Dredge the meat with flour before adding it to the pot.

Boil the meat

  1. Cover the pot and remove any scum that forms.

  2. Boil veal for 3.5 hours, lamb for 1.5 hours, and pork for 1 hour more than veal.

  3. Ensure the meat is boiled thoroughly for safety.

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. Lamb + porktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together623 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Veal + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,930 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Veal + lambtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together568 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Flour + lambtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Flour + porktop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and pork barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,187 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of veal
Long boiling turns this large, tough cut tender and gives the broth its rich meaty flavour.
Leg of lamb
Slow simmering softens its connective tissue, making the meat tender and juicy.
Leg of pork
Extended boiling breaks down connective tissue, making the pork tender enough to pull apart.
Flour
Coats the outside of the meat, helping the cooking liquid thicken slightly.

The step that matters

Boiling each meat for its own time. Each cut is large and dense, so it needs its own long simmer to become tender and fully cooked. Stopping early leaves the centre undercooked and tough, while the pork's extra hour matches its slower-softening tissue.

“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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