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Curing Dried Beef

Curing dried beef with salt, saltpeter, sugar, and pickle for 45-50 days.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Curing Dried Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cure

  1. Mix the salt, saltpeter, and sugar thoroughly.

Pack the barrel

  1. Rub the mixture on each piece of meat as you pack it into the barrel.

  2. Sprinkle any remaining mixture on the top layer of meat.

  3. Fill the barrel with 70°F pickle and seal it tightly.

  4. Roll the barrel well to ensure even distribution.

Cure

  1. Allow the meat to cure for 45 to 50 days.

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

Dried beef
Is the meat being cured, so it takes on the flavor and preserving effects of the cure.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the meat and helps preserve it during curing.
Saltpeter
Helps maintain the meat's color and contributes to preservation during curing.
Sugar
Balances the salt and adds mild sweetness to the cured flavor.

The step that matters

Rolling the barrel. Rolling spreads the salt, saltpeter, and sugar through the pickle and across every piece of meat. Uneven distribution can leave some pieces under-cured and others over-salted, so the roll helps the cure penetrate evenly over the long curing period.

“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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