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Hamburg Pickle for Meat

A brine made from water, salt, saltpetre, brown sugar, and spices for pickling meat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Hamburg Pickle for Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Make the brine

  1. In a large pot, combine 4 gallons of water, 4 pounds of coarse sea salt, 4 ounces of saltpetre, and 1 pound of very brown sugar.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon each of ground black pepper, ground white pepper, ground allspice, and ground ginger, along with ½ tablespoon of ground cloves and 1 teaspoon of ground red pepper.

  3. Boil the mixture and skim off any impurities.

Cool and use

  1. Allow the mixture to cool, then pour it over the meat.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the meat and seasons it, helping preserve it during brining.
Saltpetre
Acts as a curing agent that helps preserve the meat and gives it a pink colour.
Very brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a molasses flavour that balances the salt.
Ground black pepper
Adds sharp, aromatic heat that flavours the meat.

The step that matters

Let the brine cool before pouring it over the meat. Hot brine would begin cooking the surface of the meat and change its texture, so the brine must be cool before it is used for curing.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, pepper, allspice, ginger, clove):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, pepper, allspice, ginger, clove. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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