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Boiled Salt Beef

A boiled salt beef dish served with boiling liquor and sliced carrots.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and carrot are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,606 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Boiled Salt Beef

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Skim the boiling beef carefully.

  2. If any scum remains, wash it off with a paste brush.

  3. Boil 15 pounds of beef for 3 hours or 20 pounds for 4 hours.

  4. Serve with 1 tea cup of the boiling liquor.

  5. Garnish with sliced 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 + carrottop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Beef + teatop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together417 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methyl-3-(methyldithio)furan (thiamin, meat).

  3. Tea + carrottop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together49 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Salt beef
Is the main cut, cooked by simmering until tender and moist throughout.

The step that matters

Skim the boiling beef carefully. Scum rising from the surface is made of coagulated proteins and impurities. Removing it early keeps the cooking liquor clear and the beef tasting clean rather than muddy.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, tea):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, tea. 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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