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To Corn Beef, Pork or Hams

A brine for curing beef, pork or hams by soaking the meat in salt, sugar, molasses, potash and saltpetre.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and molasses are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,225 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

To Corn Beef, Pork or Hams

Ingredients

Directions

Make the brine

  1. In a large pot, combine 6 gallons of water, 9 pounds of coarse sea salt, 3 pounds of brown sugar, 1 quart of molasses, and 1 ounce of potash.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil and skim off any impurities.

  3. Let the brine cool completely.

  4. Once cool, dissolve 6 ounces of saltpetre and add it to the brine.

Cure the meat

  1. Pack the meat into a container and pour the cooled brine over it.

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 + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Meat + sugartop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,866 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Meat + molassestop 37% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together441 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the meat and seasons it, helping it cure and firm up.
Saltpetre
Helps preserve the meat's pink colour during curing.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the saltiness of the brine.
Molasses
Adds depth of flavour and a dark colour to the brine.

The step that matters

Let the brine cool completely before adding the meat. Adding saltpetre and meat to a hot brine can cook the surface of the meat and uneven curing results. Cooling the brine fully keeps the meat raw and cures it evenly.

“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.