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To Pot Beef

A method of curing beef with saltpetre, sea salt, water, pepper, and baking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

To Pot Beef

Oven, in the book's wordsA very cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very cool oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Cure the beef

  1. Rub the beef with saltpetre and let it sit overnight.

  2. Salt the beef with coarse sea salt and cover it with water for four days in a small pan.

Bake and serve

  1. Dry the beef with a cloth and season it with black pepper.

  2. Place the beef in a small pan, cover it with coarse paste, and bake at 300°F (150°C) for five hours.

  3. Do not add any liquid.

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. 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

Lean beef
Provides the meat that is cured and slowly baked until tender.
Saltpetre
Helps the beef keep its pink colour during curing.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the beef and seasons it during curing.

The step that matters

Do not add any liquid. The beef is sealed in coarse paste and cooked in its own juices. Adding liquid would dilute those juices and change how the meat cooks and seasons, so the instruction to keep it dry matters.

“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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