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Hannah Barlows Boiled Dinner

A boiled dinner of corned beef, Indian meal pudding, vegetables, and fruit, served with vinegar, butter, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Hannah Barlows Boiled Dinner

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beef

  1. Select a nice piece of corned beef with some fat and place it in a pot with cold water.

  2. When nearly boiling, add more cold water; when the second water boils, skim until no impurities arise.

  3. Boil the beef for several hours, starting early in the morning if it's not very tender.

  4. Add the potatoes to the pot with the meat, pudding, and plenty of water.

  5. Keep a kettle of hot water ready to replenish the pot as water evaporates.

  6. Do not add cold water to boiling meat or vegetables.

Make the pudding

  1. In a separate pot, stir Indian meal into boiling milk to make a batter as thick as will pour.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and raisins to the batter.

  3. Fill a pudding bag three-fourths full.

  4. Hang the pudding bag to swell for an hour.

  5. Put the pudding in with the meat.

  6. Boil for three hours, turning several times.

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Boil cabbage and turnips together in some of the meat pot liquor for flavor.

  2. Boil beets and carrots separately; they usually require more than an hour's cooking.

  3. Add good solid pears, one for each person, into the meat pot half an hour before serving.

  4. Peel the potatoes.

Serve

  1. Drain the meat.

  2. Place the drained meat in the center of a hot platter.

  3. Arrange the drained potatoes, pears, turnips, and sliced beets and carrots around the meat.

  4. Pour hot vinegar seasoned with butter, sugar, salt, and pepper over the vegetables.

  5. Drop the pudding into cold water.

  6. Turn the pudding onto a hot platter.

  7. Serve with rich cream and sugar or maple syrup.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cabbage + carrottop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,505 recipes

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

  4. Beef + carrottop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,606 recipes

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

  5. Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Corned beef
Provides the main meat, with fat that keeps it moist as it simmers.
Indian meal
Thickens the milk into a batter that sets as the pudding cooks.
Eggs
Bind the batter so the pudding holds its shape when boiled.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the batter, adding richness and softness.
Seeded raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture to the pudding.
Pears
Add sweetness and soft texture as they cook briefly in the broth.

The step that matters

Do not add cold water to boiling meat or vegetables.. Adding cold water drops the liquid's temperature and stops the boil, which can toughen the meat and make cooking uneven.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, milk, egg, cabbage, turnip, carrot, pear):

  1. Applefits better
  2. Plumfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, milk, egg, cabbage, turnip, carrot, pear. 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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