Name: Barreled Beef and Pork
Ingredients: 200 lbs beef; 220 lbs pork; pure leaf lard; cooking oil; butterine; dry salt meats; smoked meats

Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Barreled Beef and Pork

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Prepare the beef and pork by cutting into appropriate sizes for curing.

Cure and store

Rub the meat with dry salt and place in barrels for preservation.
Add lard and cooking oil as needed for flavor and preservation.
Store in a cool place until ready to use.

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.

Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,690 recipes

Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).
Pork + meattop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,208 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Beef + meattop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,533 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef: Forms the bulk of the cured meat and takes on salt and seasoning during curing.
Pork: Forms the bulk of the cured meat and takes on salt and seasoning during curing.
Pure leaf lard: Adds fat for flavor and helps preserve the meat as it cures.
Cooking oil: Adds fat for flavor and helps preserve the meat as it cures.

“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.