Why it works: Sugar and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 32% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,401 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Hamburgh Pickle for Beef, Hams, and Tongue
Ingredients
Directions
Make the pickle
Boil the water, coarse sea salt, sugar, saltpetre, and bruised black pepper in a large pot for 20 minutes.
Skim off any scum that rises to the surface.
Pour the pickle into a deep earthen pan and let it cool completely.
Cure the meat
Once cold, submerge the meat completely in the pickle.
Turn the meat occasionally in the brine for best results.
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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Sugar + peppertop 32% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together19,401 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,401 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws water out of the meat and seasons it, helping preserve and firm the texture.
- Sugar
- Balances the salt and adds mild sweetness while feeding the curing process.
- Saltpetre
- Converts slowly into nitrite, which gives cured meat its characteristic pink colour and preservative effect.
- Black pepper
- Adds aroma and a mild spiced flavour to the brine.
The step that matters
Submerging the meat completely. Any part of the meat left above the brine can spoil or cure unevenly, because salt and nitrite only penetrate evenly when the surface is in contact with the liquid. Turning the meat keeps every side in contact.
“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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