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Salt Beef

Salt Beef is a preserved beef dish boiled with carrots and turnips, optionally flavored with charcoal, wood vinegar, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Salt Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the bone from the beef and wash it.

  2. Skewer and bind the beef firmly.

Cook

  1. Place the beef in a pot with cold water and bring to a boil, skimming off the scum.

  2. Simmer the beef for 3.5 hours.

  3. Add carrots and turnips to boil with the beef.

  4. If the beef is tainted, boil a piece of charcoal with it.

Keep and protect

  1. For preservation, wipe the beef daily and brush with wood vinegar in warm weather.

  2. To protect from flies, sprinkle with pepper.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Turnip + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Beef + carrottop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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, providing the meat that is cooked and preserved.
Wood vinegar
Brushed on for preservation in warm weather, adding acidity that helps discourage spoilage on the surface.

The step that matters

Skimming the scum after bringing the beef to a boil. Foam rising early in the pot contains coagulated proteins and impurities. Removing it keeps the broth clearer and cleaner-tasting as the beef simmers.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, vinegar, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits about as well
  3. Onionfits about as well
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, vinegar, 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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