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Boiled Meat

A simple boiled meat dish with vegetables, served fresh or salted.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Boiled Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wipe the fresh meat and wash the salt meat.

  2. Place the meat in water and bring to a boil, skimming off any scum.

  3. Add one vegetable of each kind.

Simmer and serve

  1. Simmer gently: for fresh meat, cook for 20 minutes per pound plus 20 minutes; for salt meat, cook for 25 minutes per pound plus 25 minutes.

  2. Serve fresh meat with parsley or caper sauce, and salt meat with vegetables and dumplings.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  5. Mutton + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,239 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

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

What each ingredient does

Neck of mutton
Provides the main body of the dish, becoming tender as it simmers slowly in water.
Pork or beef
Provides the salt meat, which is cured and needs washing before it is cooked.
Vegetables
Add flavour to the cooking liquid and are served alongside the salt meat.

The step that matters

Skimming the scum. Foam that rises as the water comes to a boil contains impurities from the meat. Skimming it off keeps the broth clear and the flavour clean.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, pork, carrot, celery):

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pork, carrot, celery. 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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