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Spiced Corned Beef

A beef roast cured with salt, molasses, saltpeter, pepper, and cloves, left to cure for ten days.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Spiced Corned Beef

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Rub the salt, molasses, saltpeter, pepper, and cloves well into the beef.

  2. Turn the beef every day and rub the mixture in.

  3. The beef will be ready for use in ten days.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Molasses + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,483 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Beef + clovetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Molasses + peppertop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
The main protein that the cure penetrates and firms as it sets.
Salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat, helping preserve it during curing.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and a dark color to the cured surface of the meat.
Saltpeter
Helps preserve the meat and sets the characteristic pink color during curing.

The step that matters

Turning and rubbing the beef daily. Salt and cure must reach the whole piece evenly. Skipping the daily turning and rubbing leaves some areas under-cured, which can spoil or cure unevenly over the ten days.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, molasses, pepper):

  1. Clovethe original
  2. Allspicefits about as well
  3. Cinnamonfits less well
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, molasses, pepper. 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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