Skip to main content
Main

Boiled Leg of Pork

A boiled pork leg cooked with carrots, turnips, celery, cabbage, and barley in a broth.

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

Why it works: Turnip and parsnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 590 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Boiled Leg of Pork

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Cook the pork

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

  2. Add diced carrots, turnips, parsnips, and celery.

  3. Bring to a boil and then simmer until the pork is cooked through.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the cabbage to the pot in the last 30 minutes.

  2. Add 2 teaspoons of patent barley to a pint of the broth and cook until tender.

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. Turnip + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together590 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 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

Leg of pork
Provides the main protein, which turns tender and flavourful as it simmers slowly.
Patent barley
Thickens the broth and adds body as its starch swells during cooking.
Carrots
Add sweetness and colour to the broth as they soften.
Cabbage
Adds bulk and a mild sweetness as it cooks down in the broth.

The step that matters

Adding the cabbage in the last 30 minutes. Cabbage cooks quickly and becomes soft and sulphurous if overcooked, so it should go in late and be checked for tenderness.

Swap the parsnip

The recipe marks parsnip as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, carrot, turnip, celery, cabbage, barley):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipthe original
  3. Lettucefits about as well
  4. Beetrootfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, carrot, turnip, celery, cabbage, barley. 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

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipes