Why it works: Sugar and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 32% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,401 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Beef, Pickle for
Ingredients
Directions
Pound and mix all ingredients well.
Rub the mixture onto the beef or hams.
Turn and rub the meat every day until sufficiently salted.
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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Sugar + peppertop 32% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together19,401 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,401 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
- Common salt
- Draws moisture out of the meat and slows bacterial growth, which preserves it.
- Saltpetre
- Helps preserve the meat and gives cured meat its characteristic color and flavor.
- Brown sugar
- Adds sweetness that softens the sharpness of the salt.
The step that matters
Turn and rub the meat every day until sufficiently salted. Salt and cure penetrate meat slowly from the surface inward. Turning and rubbing daily spreads the mixture evenly, so no area is left under-salted and open to spoilage.
“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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