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Beef Suet

A method for rendering suet from a quarter of beef, separating fat and using flour to preserve.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and meat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,533 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Beef Suet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fat

  1. Remove all the suet from the quarter of beef.

  2. Add any extra fat found while cutting up the meat.

  3. Chop or grind the suet and fat.

Render

  1. Place in a large kettle on low heat to render slowly.

  2. Pour off the first fat for best shortening.

  3. Let the remaining scraps brown before pressing out fat using a wooden potato masher and a colander.

  4. Store suet in flour to keep it sweet.

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 + meattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,533 recipes

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

  2. Beef + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Meat + flourtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,529 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Beef and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,677 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Beef suet
Provides the fat that is rendered out, giving the finished fat its shortening quality.
Flour
Used to store the rendered suet, keeping it from spoiling.

The step that matters

Render on low heat. Low, slow heat melts the fat out gently without scorching it. Browning the scraps afterward adds flavor, but high heat from the start can burn the fat and give it a bitter taste.

“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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