Name: The Dutch Way to Salt Beef
Ingredients: 1 lean piece of beef; treacle or brown sugar; coarse sea salt; saltpetre (optional, see food safety note)

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 ↓

The Dutch Way to Salt Beef

Ingredients

1 lean piece of beef
treacle or brown sugar
coarse sea salt
saltpetre (optional, see food safety note)

Directions

Cure

Rub the beef well with treacle or brown sugar and turn it often for three days.
After three days, wipe the beef and rub it with coarse sea salt and finely beaten saltpetre.
Turn the beef every day for a fortnight.

Press and smoke

Roll the beef tightly in a coarse cloth and press it under a large weight.
Hang the beef to dry in wood smoke, turning it upside down every day.

Cook and serve

Boil the beef in pump water and press it; it will then grate or cut into shivers like Dutch beef.

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.

Beef + sugartop 37% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked 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

Beef: Lean meat that is cured, dried and smoked to become firm and sliceable.
Treacle or brown sugar: Adds sweetness and a rounded flavour that balances the salt.
Coarse sea salt: Draws out moisture and seasons the meat, helping preserve it during curing.
Saltpetre: Helps preserve the cured meat and gives it a pink colour.

“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.