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Vegetable Stew

A stew of cabbage, turnips, potatoes, carrots, and parsnips simmered with salt pork.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

Vegetable Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the sliced salt pork in the bottom of a large stew pot.

  2. Layer the cabbage, turnips, carrots, and parsnips on top of the pork.

  3. Sprinkle each layer with salt, pepper, and a little flour.

  4. Pour in the boiling water and cover the pot.

Simmer

  1. Simmer for 2 hours.

  2. Add the potatoes.

  3. Continue to simmer for an additional 30 minutes.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Potato + carrottop 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

Salt pork
Renders fat into the pot, adding savory richness to the broth and vegetables.
Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the stew and softens into tender strands during long simmering.
Potatoes
Break down slightly as they cook, thickening the broth and giving body to the stew.
Parsnips
Contribute natural sweetness that balances the savory pork and bitter cabbage.

The step that matters

Pour in the boiling water and cover the pot. Starting with boiling water brings the pot up to temperature quickly, and covering it traps steam so the vegetables cook evenly and the liquid does not evaporate away during the long simmer.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, potato, carrot, parsnip, pork, pepper. 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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