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Hunters’ Beef

A preserved beef cured with saltpetre, sugar, cloves, nutmeg, allspice, and suet, then baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Hunters’ Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Cure

  1. Rub the beef with saltpetre, sugar, cloves, nutmeg, allspice, and common salt.

  2. Allow the beef to hang for 2-3 days.

  3. Remove the bones from the beef.

  4. Continue rubbing the spices into the beef daily for 2-3 weeks.

  5. Bind the beef tightly with tape.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the beef in a pan with 1 cup of water at the bottom.

  2. Cover the top of the meat with shredded suet.

  3. Cover the pan with a coarse crust and brown paper.

  4. Bake the beef for 5 hours.

  5. Let the beef cool.

  6. Remove the paste and tape from the beef.

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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Beef + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,495 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Beef + clovetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Round of beef
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender and sliceable during long curing and slow baking.
Saltpetre
Cures the meat, helping it keep its pink colour and giving a cured flavour.
Common salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat, helping preserve it during curing.
Coarse sugar
Balances the salt and spices and softens the savour of the cured meat.
Shred suet
Adds fat that bastes the meat from above, keeping it moist during baking.

The step that matters

Covering the pan with a coarse crust and brown paper. The crust is a sealed case that traps steam and heat around the beef during the long bake, keeping the meat moist; if it leaks or is left open, the beef can dry out.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Clovethe original
  3. Cardamomfits less well
  4. Marjoramfits less well

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