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Beef Ilam

A preserved beef cured with saltpetre, sugar, salt, pepper, cloves, and nutmeg, then salted and dried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Beef Ilam

Ingredients

Directions

Cure

  1. Mix saltpetre, brown sugar, coarse sea salt, white pepper, cloves, and nutmeg together.

  2. Rub the mixture well into the beef.

  3. Cover the beef with common salt and let it sit for three weeks, turning it every other day.

Dry

  1. After three weeks, hang the beef up to dry.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. White pepper + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Beef + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,495 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Beef + clovetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,364 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

Beef rump
The main cut that is cured, firmed, and dried into the finished meat.
Saltpetre
Helps the cured meat keep a pink colour and a firm texture during curing.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and slows spoilage, which preserves the beef during the cure.
Brown sugar
Balances the harshness of the salt and adds a mild sweetness.

The step that matters

Turning the beef in the salt cure. Salt draws moisture out of the meat and dissolves into it. Turning the beef every other day keeps the salt in even contact with all surfaces, so the cure penetrates evenly and no area is left under-preserved.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, sugar, clove, 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.

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