Skip to main content
Main

Spiced Corned Beef

A beef (rump or round) cured with salt, molasses, and spices for ten days.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Spiced Corned Beef

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the salt, molasses, saltpetre, ground pepper, ground cloves, cinnamon, red pepper, allspice, sage, thyme, and marjoram in a bowl.

  2. Rub the mixture well into the beef.

  3. Let the beef sit in the leftover liquid for 24 hours.

  4. Turn the beef over and rub in the seasoning again.

  5. Repeat this process for 10 days until ready to use.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Sage + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,485 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Allspice + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Is the meat being cured, so it becomes seasoned and firm through the salt-based cure.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the meat and seasons it, helping preserve and firm the beef.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and a dark, rich colour and flavour to the cured surface.
Saltpetre
Helps the cure keep the meat's pink colour and inhibits spoilage during long curing.

The step that matters

Turning and re-rubbing the beef daily. Salt and cure must reach every part of the meat. Missing turns leave patches under-cured, which can spoil or cure unevenly over the 10 days.

“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

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes