Why it works: Beef and ham are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,729 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓
Dried Beef
Ingredients
Directions
Cure the beef ham using Pocock's or McMorine's recipe for ten days in the pickle solution.
Remove the ham from the pickle and dip it in boiling water.
Hang the ham in your kitchen to air dry for two 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 + hamtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,729 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
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