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To Press Beef

Beef brisket, flank or rib tops cured with saltpetre, spiced, boiled, pressed cold, then wrapped in suet and paste and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Press Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Cure the beef

  1. Remove the bone from the beef before seasoning.

  2. Salt the beef with salt and saltpetre for five days.

  3. Rub the spice mixture into the beef and turn it daily for two to three weeks.

  4. Boil the beef gently until extremely tender.

  5. Press the beef under a heavy weight or in a cheese-press until perfectly cold.

Bake and serve

  1. When ready to cook, dip the beef in cold water to remove loose spices.

  2. Bind the beef tightly with tape and place it in a pan with 1 cup of water at the bottom.

  3. Cover the beef with shredded suet and the pan with a brown crust and paper.

  4. Bake for five to six hours.

  5. Once cold, remove the paste and tape.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Sugar + allspicetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,938 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,364 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

Brisket
Forms the main body of the meat, which becomes tender during long cooking.
Saltpetre
Preserves the meat and gives it a characteristic pink-red colour during curing.
Coarse sugar
Balances the salty cure and softens the savoury flavour of the beef.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat during curing.
Cloves
Adds warm aroma and spice flavour to the cured beef.

The step that matters

Press the beef until perfectly cold. Pressing while the meat cools squeezes out excess liquid and binds it into a dense, sliceable block. Pressing before it is fully cold can leave the texture loose and crumbly.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, nutmeg, allspice):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Clovethe original
  3. Cardamomfits less well
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, nutmeg, allspice. 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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