Skip to main content
Main

Boiled Dinner

A simple boiled meal of meat with cabbage, turnips, and potatoes, finished with a brown gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cabbage and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 897 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Boiled Dinner

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the meat

  1. Place the meat in a pot and cover with boiling water.

  2. Once boiling, reduce heat to a simmer and skim off any foam.

  3. Add the cabbage, turnips, and potatoes in that order.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, and cloves.

Cook the vegetables

  1. Boil the cabbage for 1 hour.

  2. Boil the potatoes and turnips for 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Once cooked, remove the vegetables and meat to separate dishes.

  2. Make a brown gravy with the cooking juices.

  3. Serve.

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. Cabbage + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  4. Clove + turniptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Meat
Provides the main protein and flavour that the cooking liquid carries into the dish.
Cabbage
Adds bulk and a mild sweetness as it softens during long simmering.
Potatoes
Turn soft and starchy, giving body and absorbing flavour from the cooking liquid.
Turnips
Become tender and slightly sweet, adding earthy flavour to the pot.

The step that matters

Skimming the foam after boiling. Foam is coagulated proteins and impurities rising from the meat. Skimming it keeps the broth clear and prevents a murky, off-tasting liquid.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, pepper, cabbage, turnip, potato):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, cabbage, turnip, 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.

More boiled dinner recipes

Corned Beef 19New England 11 See all 21 →

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesRed CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipesStewed CabbageStewed Cabbage58 recipes