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Modern Cookery

A beef cured with sugar, saltpetre, coarse sea salt, black pepper, allspice, and juniper berries, then baked and served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,395 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Modern Cookery

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Cure

  1. Cure the beef with sugar, saltpetre, coarse sea salt, black pepper, allspice, and juniper berries for 21 days.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake the beef in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 5 to 6 hours.

  2. Let it cool in the pan.

  3. Remove the suet before serving.

  4. Serve cold; it will remain good for a fortnight.

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. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  3. Beef + allspicetop 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 + peppertop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,401 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,401 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

Beef
Forms the meat that is cured and then slowly baked until tender.
Saltpetre
Helps preserve the meat and gives it a characteristic pink-red cured color.
Sugar
Balances the salt and adds mild sweetness to the cure.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the meat and seasons it during the long cure.
Juniper berries
Add a resinous, piney aroma that flavors the cured meat.

The step that matters

Cure the beef for the full 21 days. Salt, sugar and saltpetre need time to penetrate the thick cut and preserve it evenly. Cutting the cure short leaves the centre under-seasoned and less well preserved.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Rosemaryfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Allspicethe original

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