Skip to main content
Main

Hung Beef

Hung Beef is a preserved beef cured with salt, sugar, saltpetre, vinegar, and smoked or air‑dried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,806 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Hung Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Bury the beef in snow for two weeks or hang it to tenderize.

  2. Wash the beef in strong saltwater and dry it with cloths.

Pickle

  1. Boil the coarse sea salt, coarse sugar, common salt, saltpetre, and river water together, skimming well.

  2. Rub the vinegar into the meat.

  3. Pour the warm pickle over the meat, ensuring it is fully immersed, and let it sit for fourteen days.

  4. After fourteen days, remove the beef and dry it well.

Dry or smoke

  1. If not smoking, hang it near the kitchen chimney for a week, then store in a paper bag in a dry, airy room.

  2. Otherwise, smoke it for three weeks with oak sawdust.

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. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Beef + vinegartop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,895 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. 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

Beef
Is the meat being cured, so it becomes firm and sliceable after salting and drying.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat while helping preserve it during the cure.
Coarse sugar
Balances the salt and softens its harshness in the pickle.
Saltpetre
Helps preserve the cured color and guards against spoilage during the long cure.
Common vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and slightly firms the surface of the meat.

The step that matters

Keeping the beef fully submerged in the pickle. Any part left above the brine can dry out and spoil during the fourteen-day cure, because salt only preserves meat it can penetrate evenly.

“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.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes