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To Salt Beef Red

A beef piece salted with sea salt, saltpetre, bay salt, and optional cochineal, then smoked and boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 the beef

  1. Choose a piece of beef with as little bone as possible.

  2. Sprinkle the beef and let it drain for a day.

Cure

  1. Rub the beef with coarse sea salt, saltpetre, bay salt, and cochineal powder.

  2. Rub the pickle into the meat daily for a week. Turn the meat.

  3. After eight days, drain it from the pickle.

Smoke and cook

  1. Smoke the beef at the oven’s mouth or send it to the baker’s for a few days.

  2. Boil the beef until tender with greens or carrots.

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. 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
Provides the meat that becomes firm and tender after curing and boiling.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat during the cure.
Saltpetre
Helps the meat keep its red colour during curing.
Bay salt
Adds salt to the cure, drawing out moisture and seasoning the meat.

The step that matters

Rub the pickle into the meat daily for a week. Salt and saltpetre must reach the whole piece evenly while the meat cures. Skipping days or turning the meat poorly leaves some areas under-salted and uneven in colour and texture.

“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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