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Boiled Dinner

A boiled dinner of corned beef with carrots, turnips, cabbage, potatoes, and optional red pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Boiled Dinner

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beef

  1. In the morning, place the corned beef in a pot of water and bring to a boil.

  2. After 20 minutes, if the beef is very salty, drain the first water.

Add the vegetables

  1. Add the carrots and turnips to the pot and cook for about 30 minutes.

  2. Add the cabbage and cook for another 15 minutes.

  3. Finally, add the peeled potatoes and cook until all vegetables are tender.

Serve

  1. Carefully remove the vegetables and meat from the pot.

  2. Arrange the meat in the center of a platter and surround it with the vegetables.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 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

Corned beef
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long simmering in water.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and hold their shape during long simmering.
Turnips
Contribute a mild, slightly peppery flavour and firm texture after cooking.
Cabbage
Adds sweetness and moisture as its leaves soften in the cooking liquid.
Potatoes
Soak up the seasoned cooking liquid and become soft, starchy and filling.

The step that matters

Draining the first water. Corned beef is cured in salt, so boiling it briefly and discarding that water removes excess surface salt, keeping the final broth and dish from tasting overly salty.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, cabbage, 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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