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To Make Meat Tender

A method for tenderizing tough meat using vinegar, spices, or sour milk over several days.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Meat and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,703 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

To Make Meat Tender

Ingredients

Directions

Age the meat

  1. Hang a large piece of beef or mutton in a dry, cool place for up to six weeks in winter.

  2. Rub the meat with coarse sea salt and vinegar every few days.

Soak the meat

  1. For summer, soak a tough piece of meat in vinegar for 3-4 days, adding spices if desired.

  2. To soften a tough steak, pour a few spoonfuls of vinegar on it and let it sit for 12-24 hours.

  3. Alternatively, use sour milk, changing it daily and washing the meat well afterward.

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. Meat + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,703 recipes

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

  2. Vinegar + milktop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,949 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Meat + vinegartop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,428 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methylbutanol (malty, whiskey).

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

What each ingredient does

Tough piece of meat
The cut being softened; its connective tissue is what the treatment works on.
Vinegar
Its acidity gently loosens muscle fibres and connective tissue, helping the meat soften.
Sour milk
Its mild acidity works on the surface of the meat in the same way as vinegar.

The step that matters

Washing the meat after sour milk. Sour milk is left on the meat for a long time, so rinsing it well afterward removes the lingering dairy and sourness before cooking.

“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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