Why it works: Meat and molasses work together. They rank in the top 37% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 441 recipes. The science ↓
Brine for Meat
Ingredients
Directions
Make the brine
Combine the salt, molasses, saltpeter, and water in a pot.
Bring the mixture to a boil and cook for 30 minutes.
Brine the meat
Pour the brine over the meat to cover it completely.
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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Meat + molassestop 37% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together441 recipes
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, while helping proteins hold water as the meat cures.
- Molasses
- Adds sweetness and flavor that balances the saltiness of the brine.
- Saltpeter
- Helps cure the meat and gives it the characteristic pink color of cured meat.
The step that matters
Cover the meat completely with brine. Any part of the meat left above the liquid will cure unevenly and may spoil or taste different. Full submersion keeps the salt concentration even across the whole cut.
“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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