Why it works: Sugar and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 32% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,401 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Hamburgh Pickle for Beef, Hams, and Tongue
Ingredients
Directions
Make the pickle
Boil water, coarse sea salt, coarse sugar, saltpetre, and bruised black pepper in a pot for 20 minutes.
Skim off any scum that rises to the surface.
Pour the pickle into a deep earthen pan and let it cool completely.
Cure the meat
Submerge the meat in the cooled pickle, ensuring it is fully covered.
Turn the meat occasionally in the brine.
After two weeks, the beef will be ready to serve.
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.
-
Sugar + peppertop 32% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together19,401 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,401 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws moisture out of the meat and seasons it through the curing brine.
- Coarse sugar
- Adds sweetness and balances the saltiness of the brine.
- Saltpetre
- Helps the meat keep its colour and preserves it during the long cure.
- Black pepper
- Adds aroma and a mild spiced flavour to the meat.
The step that matters
Submerge the meat fully in the cooled pickle. Any part of the meat left above the brine can spoil or cure unevenly, because salt and cure only penetrate where the meat is in contact with the liquid. Letting the pickle cool completely first also matters, since adding meat to hot brine can partly cook its 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.
You might also like
Tomato Soup526 recipes
Brown Bread461 recipes
Mutton Broth292 recipes
Yorkshire Pudding264 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.