Cocer versus hervir

Question

Small clarification: does cocer actually mean "to boil"?I thought it meant to cook in a hot water, not exactly "boil". If I am wrong then how is it different from hervir?Thank you in advance.

Silvia Píriz · Accepted Answer

Hola J. J.
Good question. These two verbs are related, but they are not interchangeable.
Hervir means “to boil” in the sense that the liquid itself reaches the boiling point:

El agua hierve. = The water is boiling.
Pon la sopa a hervir. = Put the soup on to boil.

So hervir focuses on the action of bubbling/boiling itself.
Cocer, on the other hand, usually means “to cook” something, often by boiling it in water or another liquid:

Estoy cociendo pasta. = I’m cooking pasta / boiling pasta.
Cuece las patatas durante 20 minutos. = Boil/Cook the potatoes for 20 minutes.

So your intuition was correct: cocer is often closer to “to cook by boiling” rather than simply “to boil”.
Sometimes English uses “boil” for both ideas, which is why the distinction can seem unclear.
In Spanish, however:

hervir → what the liquid does
cocer → what you do to the food

That said, there is some overlap and in recipes you may occasionally see cocer translated simply as “to boil” because boiling is the cooking method being used.
Saludos