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Hunters Beef

Cured beef seasoned 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

Cure the beef

  1. Hang the beef for 2-3 days.

  2. Mix 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.

Bake and serve

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

  2. Cover the beef with chopped suet and seal the pan with a coarse paste and brown paper.

  3. Bake for 5 hours, then let it cool before removing the paste and tape.

  4. Optionally, stuff the hole left by the bone with chopped parsley and sweet herbs.

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

Saltpetre
Helps preserve the meat and gives it a characteristic cured color and flavor.
Sugar
Balances the salt and spices and adds sweetness during the long cure.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the beef and seasons it during the curing period.
Chopped suet
Adds fat that bastes the beef and keeps it moist during the long bake.

The step that matters

Sealing the pan with the paste. The sealed paste crust traps steam and moisture around the beef during the five-hour bake, so the meat cooks gently rather than drying out. A tight seal is needed for this to work.

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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