Skip to main content
Main

Pressed Beef

A beef dish prepared by pickling, boiling, and pressing the meat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pressed Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Cure

  1. Rub the beef with a little saltpetre and plenty of fine dry salt.

  2. Sprinkle ground mace, pepper, cinnamon, and nutmeg over the beef.

  3. Let it pickle for 10 days, turning and rubbing it daily.

Cook and press

  1. Wash the beef clean and boil for 3 to 4 hours.

  2. Remove the bones and press the meat in a mold or tie it firmly with tape and place a weight on top.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Cinnamon + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef ribs
Provide the meat that becomes the pressed beef, firmed up by pressing after cooking.
Saltpetre
Helps the meat keep its pink colour during the long cure.
Fine dry salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat during the cure.
Ground cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet aroma to the cured meat.
Ground mace
Adds a warm, peppery aroma to the cured meat.
Ground nutmeg
Adds a warm, sweet aroma to the cured meat.

The step that matters

Press the meat while it is still warm. Pressing firmly helps the muscle fibres bind into a compact slab that slices cleanly. Packing it tightly while it is hot lets it set into shape as it cools, which gives a firmer, neater texture.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Clovefits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, cinnamon, pepper, nutmeg. 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.

You might also like

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