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Brine or Pickle for Beef, Ham, Shoulder or Mutton

A brine for preserving beef, ham, shoulder or mutton using salt, molasses, sugar, saltpetre, baking soda, mace and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Brine or Pickle for Beef, Ham, Shoulder or Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Make the brine

  1. In a large pot, combine water, coarse sea salt, molasses, brown sugar, saltpetre, and baking soda.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil, then skim off any impurities and let it cool.

  3. For added flavor, include mace and cloves in the brine.

Brine the meat

  1. Once cooled, submerge the meat in the brine, ensuring it is fully covered.

  2. For best results, let the meat sit in the brine for at least 4 weeks.

  3. If using beef, dry it slowly in a cool place after brining for superior dried beef.

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. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Meat + clovetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Meat + macetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,339 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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 deeply through the brine.
Saltpetre
Helps the meat keep its pink cured colour during long brining.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the saltiness of the brine.
Molasses
Adds depth, colour and a rich caramel-like flavour to the meat.
Baking soda
Raises the brine's pH, which can help the meat stay tender.

The step that matters

Keeping the meat fully submerged in the cooled brine. Any part of the meat left above the liquid can spoil or cure unevenly. Brine must be fully cool before the meat goes in, since warm liquid can partly cook the surface and encourage spoilage.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, molasses, sugar, clove):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, molasses, sugar, clove. 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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