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 ↓
Dutch Beef
Ingredients
Directions
Cure the beef
Rub the beef thoroughly with the coarse sugar and let it sit in an earthen pan for two days.
Wipe the beef with a cloth and rub in the saltpetre, coarse sea salt, and common salt.
Let it sit for sixteen days, turning and rubbing it in the brine every other day.
After sixteen days, take the beef out, wipe it dry, and rub in the bruised juniper berries.
Smoke and hang
Sew the beef in a coarse cloth without wiping it and suspend it in your chimney.
Smoke the beef for eight days or more, turning it every second day.
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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Beef + sugartop 37% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Beef
- Forms the meat that is cured and smoked into a firm, sliceable joint.
- Coarse sugar
- Adds sweetness and balances the harsh saltiness of the cure.
- Saltpetre
- Preserves the meat and gives it a characteristic pink colour during curing.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws out moisture and seasons the meat, helping to preserve it during curing.
- Common salt
- Draws out moisture and seasons the meat, helping to preserve it during curing.
- Juniper berries
- Adds a resinous, aromatic flavour that complements the smoke and the cured meat.
The step that matters
Turning and rubbing the beef in the brine every other day. Salt and curing agents only penetrate evenly when the brine is redistributed over the surface. Skipping turns leaves some areas under-cured and others over-salted, which risks spoilage in the thick cut.
“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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