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Beef

A beef preserved by brining with salt, sugar, and spices, then boiled and sliced thin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cure

  1. Bone the beef and remove the skin.

  2. Mix the saltpeter, saltprunella, coarse sea salt, sugar, and common salt together, beating the hard salts very fine.

  3. Rub the beef with the brine mixture daily for 8 days.

  4. After 8 days, wash and dry the beef.

Season and roll

  1. Mix cloves, mace, allspice, nutmeg, beaten pepper, chopped parsley, and sweet herbs.

  2. Sprinkle the mixture on the beef and roll it tightly.

  3. Wrap the beef in a coarse cloth and tie it tightly with string.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil in a pot of water for 5-6 hours, depending on the size.

  2. Once cooked, place it in a press or between two boards with a weight on top until cold.

  3. Remove from the cloth, slice thinly, and serve garnished with raw parsley.

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. Allspice + nutmegtop 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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Forms the meat that is cured, cooked and sliced for serving.
Saltpetre
Gives the cured meat its characteristic pink colour and cured flavour.
Common salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat during the long cure.
Coarse sugar
Balances the salt and softens the sharp edge of the cure.
Sal-prunella
Adds to the curing salts that preserve and season the beef.

The step that matters

Rubbing the cure in daily for 8 days. The salt mixture must be worked into the meat every day so it penetrates evenly. Salt draws moisture out and carries the cure inward, so skipping days leaves uneven seasoning and patchy preservation.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

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