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
Choose a piece of beef with as little bone as possible.
Sprinkle the beef and let it drain for one day.
Cure
Rub the beef with coarse sea salt, a small amount of saltpetre, and finely powdered cochineal.
Rub the pickle into the meat every day for a week, then only turn it.
After eight days, it will be excellent.
After sixteen days, drain it from the pickle and smoke it at the oven mouth or send it to a smoker for a few days.
Serve
For serving, boil the beef until tender with turnips or carrots.
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.
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Beef + sugartop 37% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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 the cure.
- Saltpetre
- Preserves the meat's colour and helps keep the cured flavour stable over the long cure.
- Cochineal
- Adds a red colour to the cured meat.
The step that matters
Turning the meat in the pickle every day. Salt and cure must reach all parts of the meat evenly; skipping the daily rubbing lets the cure penetrate unevenly and can leave spoiled or patchy areas.
“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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