Name: Finest Yorkshire Hung Beef
Ingredients: 20 pounds beef (ribs, round, or thick flank); ½ pound coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt'); ¼ pound saltpetre; ¼ pound sal-prunella; 2 handfuls juniper berries; 3 pounds common salt; 1 pound coarse sugar

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 ↓

Finest Yorkshire Hung Beef

Ingredients

20 pounds beef (ribs, round, or thick flank)
½ pound coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt')
¼ pound saltpetre
¼ pound sal-prunella
2 handfuls juniper berries
3 pounds common salt
1 pound coarse sugar

Directions

Prepare the cure

Cut the beef into two pieces.
In a mortar, beat the salt, saltpetre, sal-prunella, and juniper berries, then mix with common salt and sugar.
Rub the mixture all over the beef thoroughly.

Salt and dry

Place the beef in a salting pan.
Rub the beef with the pickle once a day for at least two weeks, turning it each time.
After two weeks, remove the beef and dry it with a coarse cloth.
Hang the beef in a warm kitchen or chimney corner until properly dried.

Serve

To serve, boil or cut into rashers and broil, dipping in boiling water first for better flavor.

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.

Beef + sugartop 37% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked 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: Is the meat that is cured and dried, becoming firm and sliceable.
Coarse sea salt: Draws moisture out of the meat and seasons it during the long cure.
Saltpetre: Helps preserve the meat and gives the cured beef its characteristic pink colour.
Juniper berries: Add a resinous, aromatic flavour to the cured beef.
Common salt: Draws moisture out of the meat and seasons it during the long cure.
Coarse sugar: Balances the saltiness and adds mild sweetness to the cure.

The step that matters

Rubbing the cure in and turning the beef daily. Salt penetrates the meat slowly, so the cure must be worked in thoroughly and the beef turned each day for even curing. Missed days or uneven coverage can leave spoilage-prone spots under-salted.

“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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Finest Yorkshire Hung Beef