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Again, it pays to notice specific details.

A previous poster mentioned boiling in milk as mixing death (boiling/eating) with life (milk), as a sort of generic badness.

As giraffe_lady just reminded us, the original prescription is boiling the baby in it's OWN MOTHER's milk. This is not a "put cheese on hamburger" situation, it is an explicit expression of cruelty to the mother and to her baby.

And the prohibition was put in place because boiling babies in their mother's milk was considered a delicacy back then. People used to do horrific shit, celebrating cruelty.

[kelipso]

I don’t see how you can attribute cruelty to it. It won’t be any more or less cruel to boil the calf in a vegetable stock.

Besides, it clearly seems to have been a “don’t copy the ritual process of this other tribe” rule.