Why it works: Molasses and meat work together. They rank in the top 37% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 441 recipes. The science ↓
Sweet Pickle or Brine Cure
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the pickle
Select pieces of meat weighing 12 pounds or less.
Make a pickle by mixing salt, molasses (or syrup), saltpeter, and water.
Cure the meat
Place the meat in a hardwood barrel and weigh it down with a board and stone.
Pour enough pickle over the meat to cover it.
Leave the meat in the pickle for 3 days per pound of meat.
After a week, remove the meat, discard the pickle, and replace the meat.
Weigh it down again and pour the same pickle over the meat.
Repeat this process weekly.
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.
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Molasses + meattop 37% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together441 recipes
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws water out of the meat and seasons it, helping preserve it during the cure.
- Molasses or commercial syrup
- Adds sweetness and flavor that balances the salt in the brine.
- Saltpeter
- Helps preserve the meat and gives it a characteristic pink cured color.
The step that matters
Keep the meat fully submerged in the pickle. Any part of the meat left above the liquid can spoil or dry out, because salt and curing agents only penetrate evenly when the surface stays in contact with the brine. Weighing the meat down with a board and stone keeps every piece covered throughout the cure.
“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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