Pumping Pickle for Corned Beef
Ingredients
Directions
Add 4 lb of clarified sugar to 1 gallon of full strength pickle.
Dissolve 1 oz of saltpeter or its equivalent in double-refined nitrate of soda in the mixture.
Ensure the pickle is kept in constant agitation.
Boil, skim, and cool the pickle to the required temperature before using.
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
What each ingredient does
- Clarified sugar
- Adds sweetness and balances the salty flavour of the cured meat.
- Saltpeter
- Supplies nitrate that gives cured meat its pink colour and characteristic cured flavour.
The step that matters
Boil, skim, and cool the pickle before using. Boiling and skimming remove impurities that can spoil the brine, and the pickle must be cooled to the required temperature before it contacts the meat so the meat is not partly cooked or spoiled.
“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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