Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓
Beef Loaf
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare the meat
Wash the beef and cover it with boiling water.
Add the salt pork and ensure all meat is clean.
Bring to a boil and skim off any impurities.
Simmer the mixture all day.
Remove the meat, chop it, and pick out hard pieces and bones.
Make the loaf
Add the crackers gradually with the boiling liquid until thick.
Season with salt and pepper to taste.
Butter a deep bread tin and pack the meat solidly.
Heat in the oven at 400°F (200°C) for 10 minutes.
Cool in a cold place and apply pressure if not solid enough.
Serve
To serve, loosen from the pan, hold in boiling water for 1-2 minutes, turn out, and slice.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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 + porktop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together5,690 recipes
Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).
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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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Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,121 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Beef
- Provides the meat that forms the body of the loaf once chopped and packed.
- Salt pork
- Adds fat and savoury flavour to the cooking liquid and the meat.
- Crackers
- Absorb the cooking liquid and thicken it so the chopped meat binds together.
The step that matters
Cool and press the loaf. The loaf sets as the gelatin from the simmered meat and bones cools. Packing it firmly and chilling it fully lets the slices hold their shape when turned out.
“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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