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Hunters Beef

A preserved beef cured with saltpetre, sugar, spices, and suet, then baked for several hours.

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 ↓

Hunters Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Hang the beef for 2-3 days.

  2. Grind the saltpetre, sugar, cloves, nutmeg, allspice, and coarse sea salt into a fine powder.

  3. Bone the beef and rub the spice mixture into it daily for 2-3 weeks.

  4. When ready to cook, wash off the spices with cold water.

Cook

  1. Bind the beef tightly with tape and place it in a pan with ½ teacup of water at the bottom.

  2. Cover the top of the meat with chopped suet.

  3. Seal the pan with a coarse paste and brown paper.

  4. Bake for 5 hours, then let it cool and 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. Beef + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,495 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Beef + clovetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,462 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

Beef
Forms the main body of the dish, which firms and tenderises during long slow cooking.
Saltpetre
Acts as a curing agent that preserves the meat and gives it a rosy colour.
Sugar
Balances the salty cure and adds a mild sweetness to the meat.
Suet
Melts over the meat during baking, adding fat and moisture to keep it juicy.
Nutmeg
Adds warm, aromatic flavour that penetrates the meat during the curing period.

The step that matters

Seal the pan with a coarse paste and brown paper. A tight seal traps steam and juices so the beef cooks gently in its own moisture. A gap lets moisture escape, so the meat can dry out over the long bake.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, 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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