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Mock Chicken Boiled

A boiled pork leg stuffed with potato or bread, seasoned with sage, thyme, and sweet marjoram.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Mock Chicken Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the bone from the leg of pork.

  2. Stuff the empty space with potato or bread stuffing mixed with sage, thyme, or sweet marjoram.

  3. Wrap the meat in a long cloth and tie securely at the end.

Boil and rest

  1. Place it over the fire, covered with cold water.

  2. Once the water boils, reduce the heat to a simmer and cook for two hours.

  3. Remove the pot from the heat and let the pork stand in the broth for twenty minutes.

Finish

  1. Optionally, brown the pork in the oven for a short time to enhance its flavor.

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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Sage + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together507 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Sage + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,485 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Potato + thymetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,586 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork leg
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Potato or bread stuffing
Adds moisture and body inside the meat as it cooks.
Sage
Contributes an aromatic, herbal flavour to the stuffing.
Thyme
Contributes an aromatic, herbal flavour to the stuffing.
Sweet marjoram
Contributes a mild, sweet herbal aroma to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Simmer instead of boil. Once the water boils, the heat must drop to a gentle simmer. A hard, rolling boil toughens meat proteins and can break the meat apart, while a slow simmer lets connective tissue soften gradually.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Carrotfits about as well
  2. Turnipfits about as well
  3. Parsnipfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, sage, thyme, marjoram. 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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