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New England Boiled Dinner

A hearty boiled dinner of brisket, salt pork, ham, rutabagas, cabbage, carrots, beets, onions, and potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

New England Boiled Dinner

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the meats

  1. Place the brisket, salt pork, and ham in a large saucepan.

  2. Cover the meats with cold water.

  3. Boil for 2 hours.

Cook the vegetables

  1. Add the rutabagas, cabbage, and carrots to the pot.

  2. Wash the beets.

  3. Place the beets in a separate saucepan.

  4. Cover the beets with some meat stock.

  5. Boil the beets until done.

  6. Rub off the skin of the beets.

  7. Add the small white onions and peeled potatoes when the rutabagas, cabbage, and carrots are nearly done.

  8. Remove the saucepan from the heat.

  9. Drain the vegetables in a colander.

Carve and serve

  1. Take out the meat.

  2. Trim the meat for carving.

  3. Arrange the vegetables separately on serving platters.

  4. Serve portions of each vegetable topped with thin slices of corned beef, pork, and ham.

  5. Garnish with the beets cut into fancy shapes.

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. Rutabaga + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together169 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. Pork + meattop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,208 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Well-corned brisket of beef
Provides the main savory, salty beef flavor that the broth and vegetables take on.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory depth to the cooking liquid, enriching the broth.
Sugar-cured ham
Contributes salty, sweet-cured meat flavor to the broth and the served meat.
Cabbage
Becomes tender and sweet as it cooks slowly in the seasoned broth.
Rutabagas
Turn tender and mildly sweet while absorbing flavor from the simmering meats.
Blood beets
Keep their color and sweetness when cooked separately in stock, forming the garnish.

The step that matters

Boil the beets separately in stock until done. Beets cooked apart keep their deep color from bleeding into the other vegetables and meats. Cooking them in stock rather than the main pot keeps the broth clear and the beet flavor distinct.

Swap the rutabaga

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pork, sugar, ham, cabbage, carrot, meat):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Rutabagathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, sugar, ham, cabbage, carrot, meat. 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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