Skip to main content
Main

Dutch Beef

A cured and smoked beef prepared with bay salt, saltpetre, common salt, coarse sugar, and a month of smoking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and beef 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 ↓

Dutch Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Cure

  1. Mix bay salt, saltpetre, common salt, and coarse sugar in a bowl.

  2. Rub the mixture onto the beef.

  3. Turn the beef daily.

  4. Baste the beef with the pickle.

  5. After a month, remove the beef.

Smoke and store

  1. Roll the beef in bran or sawdust.

  2. Hang the beef in a place with constant smoke for a month, avoiding direct fire.

  3. After smoking, hang the beef in a dry, cool place for storage.

Serve

  1. Cut pieces as needed.

  2. Boil or broil the pieces.

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. Sugar + beeftop 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 being cured, smoked and then cooked, so it forms the body of the dish.
Saltpetre
Helps preserve the meat and gives the cured beef its characteristic pink color.
Common salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat, helping preserve it during curing.
Coarse sugar
Balances the saltiness and feeds flavor development during the cure.
Bay salt
Adds coarse salt that cures the meat and seasons it evenly.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture onto the beef. The cure must reach the whole surface evenly, because salt and saltpetre only preserve the meat where they contact it. Turning the beef daily and basting with the pickle keeps the cure distributed through the long curing period.

“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.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes