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Boiling Meat

A leg of pork boiled for 2.5 hours, served with peas‑pudding, parsnips or carrots, greens, and potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,668 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Boiling Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the pork

  1. Place the leg of pork in a pot and cover with water.

  2. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to maintain a gentle boil.

  3. Cook for 2.5 hours from the time it starts boiling.

Serve

  1. Serve with peas‑pudding, parsnips or carrots, greens, and potatoes.

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 + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Parsnip + potatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together353 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Peas + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,016 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Peas + parsniptop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together152 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Pork + peastop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,589 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
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Peas-pudding
Adds a dense, starchy side that complements the rich, savoury pork.

The step that matters

Maintain a gentle boil. A hard, rolling boil toughens meat fibres and can break the pork apart. A gentle simmer lets connective tissue slowly break down into tender, moist meat.

Swap the parsnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, peas, potato):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Parsnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, peas, potato. 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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