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Soup

Methods of Cooking

A method for boiling various meats, including large and small joints, lamb, veal, mutton, beef, chicken, fowl, turkey, rabbits, and salt meat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lamb and rabbit share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 51 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-pentylpyridine, which smells fat. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak salt meat in cold water for at least 2 hours, then wash and dry it.

Boil the meat

  1. Place the meat in a pot with cold water and bring it to a boil.

  2. Once boiling, reduce heat to simmer until the meat is done: 15-20 minutes per pound for large joints, 12-15 minutes for smaller joints.

  3. For chicken, boil for 20 minutes; for fowl, 30-40 minutes; for turkey, 1.5 to 2 hours depending on size; for rabbits, about 1 hour and 45 minutes.

  4. If desired, boil the meat fast for 10 minutes before reducing heat to preserve juices.

Serve

  1. Remove boiled meat from the pot immediately if serving hot to prevent it from becoming soggy.

  2. Allow meat to cool in the cooking liquid if serving cold.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Lamb + rabbittop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together51 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-pentylpyridine (fat).

  2. Beef + chickentop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Lamb + beeftop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together896 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Lamb + chickentop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Turkey + rabbittop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together57 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-pentylpyridine (fat).

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

What each ingredient does

Meat
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender and juicy as it simmers in water.
Salt meat
Soaking draws out surface salt, so the cooked meat tastes less overly salty.

The step that matters

Bringing the water back to a simmer after the boil. Keeping the liquid at a gentle simmer rather than a hard boil prevents the meat fibres from toughening and drying out, so the meat stays tender and juicy.

“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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