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Beef Tamales

Beef tamales made with cornmeal, beef, lard, chili powder, and corn shucks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,028 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Beef Tamales

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the beef.

  2. Pour hot beef fat over the boiled beef.

  3. Chop the beef finely.

  4. Season the chopped beef with salt and chili powder.

Prepare the dough and shucks

  1. Scald the cornmeal with 1 teaspoon of salt and 1 tablespoon of lard.

  2. Cut the upper end of the corn shucks.

  3. Boil the shucks in cold water.

  4. Let the scalded cornmeal and shucks cool.

Assemble and cook

  1. Spread a thin layer of cornmeal on the shucks, leaving enough to fold over the ends.

  2. Place a small amount of seasoned beef in the center of each shuck.

  3. Put a few shucks in the bottom of a pot to prevent scorching.

  4. Pack the tamales into the pot.

  5. Cover the tamales with boiling water.

  6. Add 1 tablespoon of lard and chili powder to the boiling water.

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 + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,028 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the meaty filling, which is seasoned and moistened with hot fat.
Cornmeal
Forms the tender dough that wraps the filling and sets as it cools.
Lard
Adds fat that keeps the cornmeal dough moist and tender.
Corn shucks
Wrap the tamales, holding the dough and filling together while they steam.

The step that matters

Let the scalded cornmeal and shucks cool. Cornmeal dough thickens as it cools and firms up; spreading it while hot makes it hard to handle and can tear the shucks. Cooling lets it hold its shape when filled and folded.

“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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