Skip to main content
Main

Beef

A preserved beef cured with salt, sugar, and spices, then boiled and sliced.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Cure the beef

  1. Bone the beef and remove the skin.

  2. Mix saltpetre, sal-prunella, coarse sea salt and coarse sugar, and beat the hard salts fine.

  3. Rub the beef with the salt mixture and turn it every day for eight days.

  4. After eight days, wash the beef and wipe it dry.

Season and tie

  1. Mix cloves, mace, all-spice, nutmeg, beaten pepper, chopped parsley and sweet herbs.

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

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

Boil and serve

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

  2. Once cooked, press it until cold, then remove the cloth and slice.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  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 main body of the dish, which the cure penetrates and firms over the eight days.
Saltpetre
Helps the curing mixture set the meat's colour and gives it its characteristic cured flavour.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the beef and seasons it during the long cure.
Coarse sugar
Balances the salt with mild sweetness and softens the harshness of the cure.
Cloves
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the outside of the beef.
Nutmeg
Contributes a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the seasoning coat.

The step that matters

Wrapping and tying tightly before boiling. Rolling and tying the beef firmly keeps it compact so it cooks evenly and holds its shape when pressed and sliced.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, sugar, clove, corn, nutmeg, pepper, parsley. 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.

More salted beef recipes

Dutch 9Collar 5or Pork 4Ribs 4Roast 4English 3 See all 109 →

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters203 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes