Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓
Russian Polony
Ingredients
Directions
Cure the beef
Rub the beef all over with coarse sea salt and scatter more under and over it.
Let it lie for four days.
Wipe the beef.
Place it in a deep pan with boiled water, coarse sea salt, and saltpetre.
Cover and let it sit for fourteen days.
Remove the beef.
Wipe it well.
Tie string around it.
Hang it to smoke for twenty days, turning it often.
After smoking, hang it in a warm, dry room for three weeks to harden.
Make the filling
Cut the ham and beef into small pieces, removing all hard fat and any fibrous parts.
Beat the meat separately in a mortar until very fine.
Mix into a stiff paste.
Add finely-ground black pepper and small squares of hard fat to the meat mixture.
Dissolve gum dragon until thick.
Work it into the meat until soft enough to stuff into large ox skins.
Stuff and dry
Fill the skins carefully to form a solid mass.
Tie them up well.
Hang to dry.
Smoke the filled skins for a fortnight.
Keep them in a dry closet for three months.
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 + peppertop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together18,971 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Beef + meattop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,533 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
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Ham + meattop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,095 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
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Beef + hamtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,729 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
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Pepper + meattop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together8,777 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Beef
- Forms the main body of the polony, giving its firm, meaty texture once cured and dried.
- Hard old belfast hams
- Adds savoury, cured flavour and firmness to the meat mixture.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws out moisture and seasons the meat during curing, helping preserve it.
- Saltpetre
- Helps preserve the meat and sets its characteristic reddish colour during curing.
- Gum dragon
- Thickens the mixture so it holds together and stuffs into the skins as a solid mass.
The step that matters
Stuffing the skins to a solid mass. If the meat is packed loosely, air pockets form and the polony can spoil or dry unevenly. Filling firmly and tying well keeps the mass dense and even during drying.
“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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