Why it works: Molasses and beef work together. They rank in the top 35% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 606 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓
Salt Beef
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the pickle
Make a strong pickle with rock salt and cold water until it can float an egg.
Add a little salt to the bottom of the tub.
For 100 pounds of beef, mix 2 quarts of molasses and ¼ pound of saltpetre.
Cure and cook
Let the beef cure for 10 days.
Boil the beef slowly until the bones come out easily.
Wrap the beef in a towel and place a heavy weight on it until it cools.
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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Molasses + beeftop 35% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together606 recipes
Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Rock salt
- Salt draws out moisture and seasons the beef while it cures.
- Molasses
- Adds sweetness and helps the cured beef keep a dark colour and rich flavour.
- Saltpetre
- Helps the beef keep its pink colour and inhibits spoilage during curing.
- Beef
- The main cut that is cured, then slowly boiled until tender.
The step that matters
Boil the beef slowly. Boiling gently keeps the meat tender and prevents the outside from toughening before the centre is cooked. A hard rolling boil tightens muscle fibres and makes the salt beef dry and stringy.
“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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