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Cured Beef, to Eat Cold

A beef cured in a mixture of sugar, salt, spices, saltpetre, and cochineal, then left to cure for 2–3 weeks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cured Beef, to Eat Cold

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pickle

  1. Combine sugar, coarse sea salt, allspice, cloves, saltpetre, cochineal, and water in a pot.

  2. Boil the mixture slowly for 20 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and let it cool completely.

Cure the beef

  1. Pour the cooled pickle over the beef, turning it once or twice a day.

  2. Continue this for 2 to 3 weeks until ready to use.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + beeftop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Allspice + beeftop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,940 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Sugar + allspicetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,938 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Sugar + clovetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and clove barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 17,182 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 while helping preserve the beef during curing.
Sugar
Balances the salt and adds sweetness, softening the saltiness of the cure.
Saltpetre
Helps preserve the curing colour and flavour of the beef over a long cure.
Beef
The main cut being cured; the pickle penetrates it slowly over the curing period.

The step that matters

Cooling the pickle completely before pouring it over the beef. Pouring hot pickle over raw meat would partly cook the surface and uneven curing could follow. Cooling it fully keeps the beef raw while the brine works into the meat.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Gingerfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, allspice, beef. 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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