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Dried or Smoked Beef

A preserved beef prepared by spicing, pickling, drying, and smoking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Dried or Smoked Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Ask the butcher to cut the round beef into four pieces.

  2. Wash the meat and dry it thoroughly with a cloth.

  3. Grind equal amounts of cloves and mace into a powder. Rub the spice mixture all over the beef with your hand.

Pickle and cure

  1. Prepare a pickle as directed in the previous article, then boil and skim it. Pour the hot pickle over the spiced beef.

  2. Let the beef sit in the pickle for at least six weeks.

Smoke and serve

  1. After six weeks, smoke the beef for about three weeks using corn cobs.

  2. To serve, slice the smoked beef thinly or fry it in a skillet with butter and the beaten egg.

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 + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Beef + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,028 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Clove + corntop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together712 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Round beef
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming firm and chewy as it cures and dries.
Pickle
Salt-based brine that preserves the meat and seasons it during the long soak.
Ground cloves and mace
Add aromatic, warm spice flavour to the surface of the beef.
Corn cobs
Provide smoke that adds flavour and helps dry and preserve the meat.

The step that matters

Letting the beef sit in the pickle for at least six weeks. The beef must stay fully submerged and cure for the full period so the salt penetrates evenly and preserves the meat before smoking. Cutting the time short leaves the centre under-cured and less safe to keep.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, clove, corn, butter, egg):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, clove, corn, butter, egg. 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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