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Boiled Beef

A method for canning lean beef by boiling it and preserving it in gelatinous liquid.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and white pepper work together. They rank in the top 30% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 616 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Boiled Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Select moderately lean beef and cut it into can-sized pieces, allowing for 25% weight loss.

  2. Place the beef in a crate.

  3. Plunge the crate into boiling water with 3 lb of coarse sea salt.

  4. Boil for 2 to 3 hours.

  5. Remove the crate.

Make the jelly

  1. Pack the meat into cans.

  2. Boil down 12½ gal of the cooking water to 6 gal.

  3. Dissolve 1 lb of soaked gelatin in the reduced liquid.

  4. Add 2 oz of ground white pepper to the jelly.

Fill and process

  1. Fill the cans with the jelly.

  2. Solder on the tops.

  3. Process the sealed cans at 250 °F (120 °C) for 45 min for 1 lb cans, 55 min for 2 lb cans, 65 min for 3 lb cans, and 85 min for 5 lb cans.

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 + white peppertop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together616 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Beef + gelatintop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together59 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-pinene (pine, resin).

  3. Gelatin + white peppertop 40% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together20 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long boiling and forms the canned contents.
Gelatin
Sets the cooking liquid into a firm jelly that surrounds the meat in the can.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the beef as it cooks in the boiling water.
Ground white pepper
Adds a mild, sharp spice to the jelly.

The step that matters

Boil down the cooking water to 6 gal. The reduced cooking water must be concentrated enough to set firmly as gelatin-based jelly once cooled, so the liquid is reduced before the gelatin is dissolved.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, gelatin):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Pepperfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, gelatin. 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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