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Hunting Beef

A beef buttock cured with salt, spices, and sugar, then baked in fat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Hunting Beef

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Cure

  1. Rub the beef daily for a month with the salt, saltpetre, brown sugar, coriander, cloves, mace, nutmeg, allspice, black pepper, cayenne pepper, and ginger.

  2. In a deep pan, add plenty of fat and place the beef inside, ensuring it does not touch the bottom.

Bake and cool

  1. Cover the beef with more fat and seal the top with a thick paste of flour and water to trap steam.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for five hours.

  3. Let the beef cool completely in the pan before removing.

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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Coriander + allspicetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Beef
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender during long, slow cooking.
Saltpetre
Gives the cured meat its pink colour and helps preserve it during the long cure.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat while it cures.
Brown sugar
Balances the salt and spices with sweetness and helps browning on the surface.
Fat
Surrounds the beef during baking, adding moisture and sealing out air.

The step that matters

Sealing the paste. The flour and water paste must form a tight, unbroken seal over the pan so steam stays trapped. If it cracks, moisture escapes and the beef can dry out during the long bake.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, sugar, coriander, clove, nutmeg, allspice, pepper. 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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