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Boiled Leg of Pork

A salted pork leg slowly boiled for several hours, optionally garnished with carrots, turnips, or parsnips.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and carrot are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,772 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Boiled Leg of Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Cure

  1. Rub the leg of pork well with coarse sea salt and let it sit in the salt for 7 to 10 days, turning and rubbing it daily.

  2. An hour before cooking, soak the pork in cold water to improve the color.

Boil

  1. Place the pork in a pot and cover it with cold water.

  2. Bring the water to a boil slowly, skimming off any scum that rises.

  3. Simmer gently until the pork is tender, about 3 hours for an 8-pound leg, ensuring it does not boil fast.

  4. Optionally, add carrots, turnips, or parsnips to the pot for the last part of cooking and use them as a garnish.

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 + carrottop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,772 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

Leg of pork
Forms the main body of the dish; long simmering makes the meat tender and moist.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat deeply during the long cure.

The step that matters

Simmer gently without a fast boil. A rolling boil toughens and dries meat fibers and can break the pork apart. Gentle heat lets collagen soften slowly, keeping the meat tender and juicy.

“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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