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To Make Meat Tender

A method for tenderizing beef or mutton using salt, vinegar, spices, and sour milk over several days.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,759 recipes. Both carry 1-hexanal, which smells fruit. The science ↓

To Make Meat Tender

Ingredients

Directions

Hang the meat

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

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

Soak the meat

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

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

  3. For greater success, use sour milk, changing it daily and washing the meat 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. Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef or mutton
The tough muscle fibres are what softens during aging or soaking.
Vinegar
Its acidity gradually loosens and softens the tough muscle fibres of the meat.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture from the meat's surface, helping to preserve it during long hanging.
Sour milk
Its acidity gently softens the meat's fibres during soaking.

The step that matters

Changing the soaking liquid and washing the meat. Acidic liquid left on meat for days keeps working on its surface, so a fresh batch and rinsing help avoid an overly sour or mushy texture, while the acid still softens the fibres.

“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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