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Boiled Meats

A boiled meat dish with veal, lamb, beef or mutton, pork, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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

Prepare

  1. Clean the copper pot or ensure it is well tinned.

Boil the meat

  1. Boil the meat slowly in cold water; cover the pot.

  2. Dredge mutton or beef with flour before adding to the pot.

  3. Remove any scum that forms on the surface.

  4. Boil veal for 3.5 hours, lamb for 1.5 hours, and allow 1 hour for every 4 pounds of beef or mutton.

  5. For corned beef, plunge it into boiling water to retain juices.

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
Forms the bulk of the joint and gives the main body of the stew-like broth its meaty flavour.
Leg of lamb
Adds rich, savoury meat flavour and fat to the pot.
Beef or mutton
Provides dense, meaty flavour; flour coating helps thicken the cooking liquid.
Flour
Coats the beef or mutton so the surface sets and the cooking liquid thickens slightly.

The step that matters

Remove any scum that forms on the surface. Scum is coagulated protein and fat that rises as the meat simmers. Skimming it keeps the broth clear and stops it tasting muddy or greasy.

“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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