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Boiler Leg of Pork

A large leg of pork is salted, pickled, then boiled until tender, optionally served with carrots, turnips, or parsnips.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and carrot are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,772 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Boiler Leg of Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Cure

  1. Rub the leg of pork well with coarse sea salt and let it sit in a pickle for 7 to 10 days, turning and rubbing it daily.

  2. An hour before cooking, soak the pork in cold water to improve the color.

Boil and serve

  1. Place the pork in a pot and cover it with cold water.

  2. Gradually bring the water to a boil, skimming off any scum that rises.

  3. Simmer gently for about 3 hours, or until the pork is tender, avoiding a fast boil.

  4. Optionally, boil carrots, turnips, or parsnips with the pork and arrange them around the dish for garnish.

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. Pork + carrottop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,772 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pork leg
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender and moist as it simmers slowly.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the meat and seasons it during the multi-day pickle.

The step that matters

Gradually bring the water to a boil and simmer gently. A fast boil toughens the meat fibres and makes the outside tough and stringy before the inside is tender. A slow simmer lets collagen break down gently, keeping the pork tender and moist.

“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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