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To Corn Beef

A salted and cured beef prepared with spices, then boiled or baked, often stewed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

To Corn Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Remove the bone from the beef and rub it with common salt; let it sit for 1-2 days.

  2. Mix sal-prunella, brown sugar, black pepper, coarse sea salt, cloves, and nutmeg, then rub this mixture into the beef.

Cure and hang

  1. Let the beef cure for 2 weeks, turning it daily.

  2. Hang the beef in a dry place.

  3. Smoke it if possible.

Cook

  1. Boil gently.

  2. Bake in a deep dish covered with coarse pastry.

  3. Add just enough water to cover the meat.

  4. Simmer for 4-6 hours.

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 + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + beeftop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,495 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef round
Provides the meat that is cured, then cooked until tender.
Common salt
Draws moisture out of the meat and helps cure it, seasoning it deeply.
Sal-prunella
Acts as a curing agent that gives the meat its characteristic colour and flavour.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the saltiness of the cure.
Coarse sea salt
Adds salt to the cure, drawing moisture out and seasoning the meat.

The step that matters

Turning the beef daily during the 2-week cure. Salt cures penetrate unevenly, so turning the meat exposes every surface to the cure and keeps the seasoning and curing consistent throughout.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Cardamomfits about as well

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