Why it works: Beef and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 37% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,435 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓
Beef Hams
Ingredients
Directions
Cure the beef
Rub the leg of beef well with saltpetre and salt.
Make a pickle with bay salt, saltpetre, brown sugar, and common salt.
Rub the beef with the pickle every day for a week.
Then rub it every other day for about three weeks.
Smoke
Roll the beef in bran or sawdust and smoke it.
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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Beef + sugartop 37% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together5,435 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Saltpetre
- Preserves the meat and gives it the characteristic pink color of cured beef.
- Common salt
- Draws out moisture and seasons the meat while helping preserve it.
- Brown sugar
- Balances the saltiness and adds mild sweetness to the cure.
- Bay salt
- Adds coarse salinity to the cure, helping draw moisture out of the meat.
The step that matters
Rubbing the pickle in every day, then every other day. The cure works by slowly penetrating the meat, so skipping rubs or stopping early leaves the center under-cured and less protected against spoilage.
“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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