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Breakfast Beef

A preserved beef cured with saltpetre, salt, sugar, and sour beer, then boiled or braised.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and beer work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 414 recipes. Both carry 2-methyl-3-(methyldithio)furan, which smells thiamin, meat. The science ↓

Breakfast Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Cure

  1. Wash and dry the beef.

  2. Rub the beef with saltpetre, salprunella, and coarse sea salt, all finely beaten.

  3. After 2 hours, rub the beef with brown sugar.

  4. After another 2 hours, add more salt and coarse sea salt.

  5. Let the beef sit for 48 hours.

  6. Drain the beef and hang it in a very dry, cool place.

  7. After 10 days, soak the beef in sour beer for a few hours before cooking.

Cook

  1. Boil or braise the beef like hunter’s beef.

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 + beertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together414 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methyl-3-(methyldithio)furan (thiamin, meat).

  2. Sugar + beertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together699 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

Saltpetre
Helps the cured beef keep its pink colour and resist spoilage during the long cure.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the beef and seasons it, slowing spoilage during curing.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and flavour that balances the sharp saltiness of the cure.
Sour beer
Its acidity and flavour season the beef during the final soak before cooking.

The step that matters

Soaking in sour beer before cooking. After days of curing, the beef is heavily salted on the surface and through the meat. Soaking it for a few hours before cooking draws out some of that excess salt and softens the surface. Soaking too briefly leaves the beef too salty, and too long can make the flavour weak.

“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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