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Boiled Dinner

A boiled dinner of corned beef with carrots, parsnips, turnips, potatoes, cabbage, and beets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsnip and turnip 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 Dinner

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beef

  1. Wash the corned beef in cold water and place it in a pot with enough cold water to cover it.

  2. Bring the pot to a boil, then skim off any foam.

  3. Simmer the beef slowly until tender, about 40 minutes per pound.

Add the vegetables

  1. Add the turnips, carrots, and parsnips about 1 hour before the meat is done.

  2. Add the potatoes 30 minutes before the meat is done.

  3. Tie the cabbage in cheesecloth and cook it in a separate pot with some of the beef broth for 1 hour or until tender.

  4. Cook the beets separately in boiling water, then plunge them into cold water and rub off the skins.

Serve

  1. Serve the corned beef in the center of a platter with the carrots, turnips, parsnips, and potatoes around it.

  2. Serve the cabbage and beets in separate dishes.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Corned beef
Provides the main meat, with fat streaks that keep it moist and flavourful as it simmers.
Potatoes
Turn soft and starchy as they cook, giving body to the plate.
Cabbage
Becomes tender and sweet as it cooks slowly in the broth.

The step that matters

Skimming the foam after the boil. Foam carries impurities and fat that would cloud the broth and give it an off flavour, so skimming keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

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

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