Why it works: Beef and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 37% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,435 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓
Cured Brisket of Beef for Christmas
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Cure
Rub the brisket with saltpetre at night.
Mix sugar and coarse sea salt, then rub the mixture over the beef the next morning.
Let the beef sit in the pickle for two weeks, turning and rubbing it daily.
Prepare for baking
After two weeks, place the beef in an earthen pan with chopped suet covering the bottom and top.
Add a little water to prevent burning.
Bake and serve
Bake slowly at 300°F (150°C) for six hours.
Serve cold.
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 + sugartop 37% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together5,435 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Brisket of beef
- The main cut, which slow curing and long baking turn firm and tender.
- Saltpetre
- A curing agent that preserves the meat and helps give it a pink colour.
- Sugar
- Balances the salt and adds mild sweetness to the cured meat.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws moisture out of the beef and seasons it during the cure.
- Suet
- Fat that bastes the meat from below and above, adding moisture during baking.
The step that matters
Turning and rubbing the beef daily during the two-week cure. Salt and curing agents penetrate meat slowly by diffusion, so regular turning and rubbing spreads the cure evenly and keeps it from curing unevenly or spoiling at the surface.
“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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