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To Boil a Leg of Pork

A leg of pork is soaked in salt, boiled, and served with peas pudding, melted butter, mustard, buttered turnips, carrots, or greens.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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To Boil a Leg of Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Cure

  1. Soak the leg of pork in coarse sea salt for 6-7 days.

Boil

  1. Place the salted leg of pork in a pot of boiling water.

  2. Ensure there is enough water to fully submerge the meat.

  3. Maintain a steady boil throughout the cooking process.

Serve

  1. Serve with peas pudding, melted butter, mustard, buttered turnips, carrots, or greens.

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of pork
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender and sliceable after long boiling.
Coarse sea salt
Cures the meat during the long soak, seasoning it and drawing out moisture.

The step that matters

Keep the meat fully submerged and the boil steady. Meat exposed above the water cooks unevenly, and a weak or uneven boil slows heat transfer, so the leg may stay tough in places or cook unevenly.

“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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