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Beef

A preserved beef cured with salt, sugar, spices, and boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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

Ingredients

Directions

Cure the beef

  1. Bone the beef and remove the skin.

  2. Mix the saltpetre, sal-prunella, coarse sea salt, coarse sugar, and common salt finely.

  3. Rub the beef with the salt mixture and turn it daily for 8 days.

  4. After 8 days, wash and dry the beef.

Season and roll

  1. Grind the cloves, mace, all-spice, nutmeg, and beaten pepper finely.

  2. Mix in the chopped parsley and sweet herbs.

  3. Sprinkle the mixture on the beef and roll it tightly.

  4. Wrap it in a coarse cloth and tie it tightly with string.

Boil, press and serve

  1. Boil in a pot of water for 5-6 hours depending on size.

  2. After boiling, press the beef between two boards with a weight until cold.

  3. Remove from the cloth, slice thinly, and serve garnished with raw parsley.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 and becomes firm and sliceable after curing and boiling.
Saltpetre
Helps the beef keep its pink colour and adds a cured flavour during the long cure.
Common salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat during the curing period.
Coarse sugar
Balances the saltiness and softens the harsh edge of the cure.
Sal-prunella
Acts as a curing agent that works with the salt to preserve the meat.

The step that matters

Wash and dry the beef after curing. Removing the surface cure before rolling keeps the seasoning from becoming overly salty and helps the spice mixture stick to a dry surface.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, sugar, clove, corn, nutmeg, pepper, parsley. 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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