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Strange Method of Preparing What the French Call Scarlet Beef Without Saltpetre

A method of preparing scarlet beef using bacon, spices, herbs, and boiling without saltpetre.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Laurel and thyme are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,444 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Strange Method of Preparing What the French Call Scarlet Beef Without Saltpetre

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Cut thick slices of bacon to lard the inside of a boned rump of beef.

  2. Mix salt with fine spices and rub it onto the bacon. Rub the remaining salt mixture onto the beef.

  3. Add laurel leaves, thyme, basil, and bruised juniper berries, then roll the beef tightly in a linen cloth.

Cure and cook

  1. Wrap it in a coarser cloth and bury it in the ground for 6-7 days.

  2. Boil the beef with fresh beef slices, sweet herbs, onions, and carrots in water without salt.

  3. Serve hot or cold.

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. Laurel + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,444 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Thyme + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  3. Thyme + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Basil + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,113 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Laurel + basiltop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together643 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Bacon
Lards the lean rump, adding fat and savoury flavour as it cures and cooks.
Salt
Cures the meat, drawing out moisture and seasoning it deeply during the burial period.
Beef
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender and sliceable after long curing and boiling.
Juniper berries
Add a resinous, aromatic flavour that penetrates the meat during curing.

The step that matters

Boil without salt. The beef has already been heavily salted and cured, so adding salt to the boiling water would make it overly salty. Boiling gently keeps the meat tender rather than tough.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (laurel, thyme, basil, beef, carrot):

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against laurel, thyme, basil, beef, carrot. 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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