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Boiled Meats

Various meats boiled slowly in water, with flour for mutton or beef, cooked for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Boiled Meats

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil meats slowly in a clean, well-tinned copper pot.

  2. Boil the leg of veal for 3.5 hours.

  3. Add 30 minutes to the cooking time for the leg of pork.

  4. Dredge the mutton or beef with flour before placing in cold water.

  5. Keep the pot covered and remove any scum that forms.

  6. Allow 1 hour of cooking for every 4 pounds of beef or mutton.

  7. Boil the 4-pound leg of lamb for 1.5 hours.

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. Lamb + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together896 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Veal + beeftop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of veal
Main meat that, simmered slowly for a long time, becomes tender as its connective tissue softens.
Flour
Coats the outside of the meat, helping seal its surface against the water.
Leg of lamb
Large cut that, simmered gently, becomes tender as its connective tissue softens.
Beef or mutton
Large cut that, simmered gently, becomes tender as its connective tissue softens.
Leg of pork
Large cut that, given extra simmering time, becomes tender as its connective tissue softens.

The step that matters

Boil meats slowly. A rolling boil toughens muscle proteins and can break the meat apart, while a gentle simmer lets connective tissue soften slowly. Keeping the water barely bubbling gives tender, intact meat.

“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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