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To Salt Beef Red

A beef piece cured with salt, sugar, saltpetre, and cochineal, then smoked and boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

To Salt Beef Red

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Choose a piece of beef with little bone.

  2. Let it drain for a day.

Cure

  1. Rub the beef with coarse sea salt, coarse sugar, saltpetre, and cochineal in fine powder.

  2. Rub the pickle into the meat daily for a week. Turn it.

  3. Drain it from the pickle after sixteen days.

Smoke and cook

  1. Smoke the beef at the oven mouth when heated with wood for a few days.

  2. Boil until tender.

  3. Serve with greens or carrots.

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 + 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
Provides the meat that is cured, smoked and then tenderised by boiling.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat during curing.
Saltpetre
Helps the meat keep its pink colour during curing.
Coarse sugar
Adds a little sweetness and balances the saltiness of the cure.

The step that matters

Rub the pickle into the meat daily for a week. The cure must reach the whole piece evenly, so regular rubbing and turning matter. Uneven curing leaves some parts under-salted and at risk of spoilage.

“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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