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 ↓
To Cure Beef
Ingredients
Directions
Cure the beef
Mix the coarse salt, brown sugar, and saltpetre together well.
Rub the mixture thickly onto the beef, continuing until all the mixture is used.
Let the beef sit for two weeks.
Finish and hang
After two weeks, pour boiling water over the beef.
Hang the beef in a dry place to cure.
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
- Coarse salt
- Draws moisture out of the meat and preserves it while curing.
- Brown sugar
- Adds sweetness and balances the harshness of the salt.
- Saltpetre
- Helps keep the meat's pink colour and inhibits spoilage bacteria during curing.
The step that matters
Rubbing the cure on evenly. Salt and saltpetre only preserve the meat where they touch it, so the mixture must be applied thickly and fully covering the beef. Gaps can allow spoilage to start during the long rest.
“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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