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Boiled Salt Beef

A boiled beef seasoned with pepper, mace, cloves, and other spices, then glazed with gelatin and Parisian essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Boiled Salt Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Wash the beef and trim off any excess fat.

  2. Rub the inside of the meat with black pepper, mace, and ground cloves.

  3. Roll up the meat and tie it into shape, then wrap it in a cloth.

Simmer

  1. Place the meat in a saucepan with plenty of tepid water and bring the water to a boil.

  2. Remove the scum.

  3. Add carrots, turnip, onion, celery seed, and the tied peppercorns.

  4. Cover the saucepan and let the meat simmer very slowly for 5 hours.

  5. If serving cold, leave the meat in the cooking liquid until it cools.

Press and glaze

  1. Tighten the cloth and place it between two baking sheets with weights on top overnight.

  2. Remove the cloth, wipe the meat thoroughly, and trim it.

  3. Soak gelatine in cold water.

  4. Dissolve the gelatine in boiling water.

  5. Add Parisian essence to achieve a rich brown color.

  6. Pour the glaze into a basin and use it before it cools.

  7. Coat the meat with glaze by brushing it several times.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Silver-side of beef
Is the main cut that becomes tender and sliceable after long, slow simmering.
Black pepper
Adds warm, sharp aroma that flavours the meat as it is rubbed in and cooked.
Gelatine
Sets the cooking liquid into a glaze that gives the cold meat a glossy coating.

The step that matters

Simmering very slowly for 5 hours. At a gentle simmer the connective tissue in the beef slowly softens into tender meat, while a hard boil toughens the muscle fibres and can leave the meat dry and stringy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, clove, carrot, turnip, onion, celery):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, clove, carrot, turnip, onion, celery. 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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