Name: To Corn Beef
Ingredients: 8 lbs. beef, free of kernels; 1 lb. coarse sea salt; 3-4 oz. brown sugar; 2 teaspoons saltpetre; 6 small kakagee limes

Why it works: Beef and lime work together. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 539 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

To Corn Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Puncture the beef well with a steel fork.
Mix half of the salt, brown sugar, saltpetre, and juice of the limes.
Rub the mixture into the beef and place it in a large basin.
Cover the beef with the remaining salt and stick lime skins into slits in the meat.
Allow it to steep for a few days, rubbing it daily until ready to boil.

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.

Beef + limetop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together539 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Sugar + limetop 29% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,332 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Beef + sugartop 37% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together5,435 recipes

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