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 ↓
Beef, Hung
Ingredients
Directions
Cure the beef
Mix the coarse sea salt, brown sugar, and saltpetre together.
Rub the mixture into the beef every morning.
Hang and smoke
Hang the beef in a cool place for two weeks to tenderize.
Smoke the meat for about three weeks.
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
- Beef
- The main cut, which becomes firmer and more concentrated in flavour as it cures and dries.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws out moisture and seasons the meat, firming its texture during curing.
- Brown sugar
- Adds sweetness that balances the salt and rounds out the cured flavour.
- Saltpetre
- Helps preserve the meat's colour and cured flavour during the long curing period.
The step that matters
Rubbing the cure in every morning. Salt and cure reach the meat's interior slowly by diffusion. Uneven coverage leaves some areas under-cured and others too salty, so reapplying the mixture daily keeps the surface evenly covered.
“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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