Skip to main content
Main

Dried Beef

Beef cured with salt, saltpetre, and sugar, left to sit in its own liquid for six days, then hung to dry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beef and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 37% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,435 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Dried Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Buy the best lean and tender beef, preferably from the round.

  2. Mix the salt, saltpetre, and brown sugar together.

Cure

  1. Rub one-third of the mixture onto the beef for three consecutive days.

  2. Let the beef sit in the liquid it creates for six days.

  3. Hang the beef up to dry.

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. Beef + sugartop 37% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,435 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

Beef
Lean, tender meat is the body of the dish, and the cure works on its proteins and moisture.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the meat and preserves it by slowing bacterial growth.
Saltpetre
Helps the meat keep its red colour and adds a cured flavour during the curing period.
Brown sugar
Balances the salt with sweetness and helps the cure taste mellow rather than harsh.

The step that matters

Rubbing the cure in over three days. The salt mixture must be reapplied across several days so it penetrates evenly. Uneven or skipped rubbing leaves parts of the meat under-cured and vulnerable to spoilage.

“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.

More dried beef recipes

Creamed 21with Cream 11with Eggs 6on Toast 5and Eggs 4Fricassee 3 See all 35 →

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes