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Leg of Pork Corned and Boiled

A leg of pork seasoned with coarse sea salt and sugar, left to cure for three days, then boiled until tender and served with vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,843 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Leg of Pork Corned and Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Cure the pork

  1. Mix the salt and sugar together.

  2. Rub the mixture all over the leg of pork and let it stand for three days, turning it daily.

Boil and serve

  1. In a large pot, bring enough water to a boil to cover the meat.

  2. Add the meat to the boiling water, adding more water if it boils away.

  3. Cook until the meat is tender, then serve with 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. Pork + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,843 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + tomatotop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,667 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Sugar + porktop 37% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,579 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the pork and seasons it deeply during the curing period.
Sugar
Balances the saltiness and adds a mild sweetness to the cured meat.
Leg of pork
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender and moist as it simmers.

The step that matters

Keeping the meat covered while it cooks. If the water boils away and the meat is exposed, the surface can dry out and toughen. Adding more boiling water keeps the leg submerged so it cooks evenly and stays tender.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, pork):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, pork. 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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