Skip to main content
Main

Boiled Beef or Mutton

A pot-cooked beef or mutton with carrots, turnips, and onions, seasoned with coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Boiled Beef or Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wipe the meat and trim off excess fat.

  2. Weigh the joint and place it in a pot of boiling water to cover it.

Boil

  1. Season with salt and boil for 5 minutes to harden the outside.

  2. Remove the scum.

  3. Add chopped vegetables.

  4. Simmer gently until tender.

  5. Cook for 20 minutes per pound plus an additional 20 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve boiled beef with cooked carrots and turnips, or boiled mutton with caper sauce.

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 + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  5. Beef + carrottop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,606 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

Beef or mutton
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender and firm as it simmers slowly.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the meat and water, flavouring the outside of the joint as it boils.
Carrots
Add sweetness and aroma as they cook alongside the meat in the broth.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and body as they soften in the cooking liquid.
Onions
Add savoury depth and aroma to the broth as they cook down.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until tender. Boiling vigorously toughens meat proteins and can break the joint apart. A gentle simmer lets connective tissue slowly break down, giving a tender result.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, turnip):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Beetrootfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip. 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.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes