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Beef

A cured beef prepared with salt, sugar, spices, boiled for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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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

Prepare the beef

  1. Bone the beef and remove the skin.

  2. Mix saltpetre, saltprunella, coarse sea salt, and coarse sugar, and beat the hard salts fine.

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

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

Season and wrap

  1. Mix cloves, mace, all-spice, nutmeg, beaten pepper, chopped parsley, and sweet herbs; sprinkle on the beef.

  2. Roll the beef tightly and wrap it in a coarse cloth, tying it securely with beggar's tape.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil in a large pot of water for six hours for a large collar or five hours for a small one.

  2. Remove from water and press until cold, using boards and a weight if no press is available.

  3. Slice 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 + 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 meat that is cured, then cooked until tender and sliced.
Saltpetre
Cures the meat and helps it keep its red colour during the long salting.
White salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the beef during the curing period.
Coarse sugar
Balances the saltiness and adds mild sweetness to the cure.

The step that matters

Boiling for the full time. Boiling for the stated hours gives the thick cut time to cook through and become tender. Stopping early can leave the centre undercooked, while the pressing step firms the meat so it slices cleanly once cold.

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.

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