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Beef

A preserved beef cured with salt, sugar, spices, and herbs, then boiled and sliced thinly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice 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 ↓

Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Cure the beef

  1. Bone the beef and remove the skin.

  2. Mix the saltpetre, coarse sea salt, coarse sugar, and common salt finely.

  3. Rub the beef with the salt mixture and turn the beef daily for 8 days.

  4. After 8 days, wash the beef and dry the beef.

Season and roll

  1. Grind the cloves, mace, allspice, nutmeg, and beaten pepper finely.

  2. Mix the ground spices with chopped parsley and sweet herbs, then sprinkle the mixture on the beef.

  3. Roll the beef tightly and wrap it in a coarse cloth, tying it securely.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil the beef in a pot of water for 5 hours for a small collar or 6 hours for a large one.

  2. After boiling, press the beef between two boards with a weight until cold.

  3. Remove the beef from the cloth and slice the beef thinly.

  4. Serve the beef garnished with raw parsley.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming firm and sliceable after curing and boiling.
Common salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat during the long cure.
Saltpetre
Helps the meat keep its pink colour during curing.
Coarse sugar
Balances the saltiness and softens the harsh edge of the cure.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic flavour to the spice coating.

The step that matters

Turning the beef daily during the cure. Salt must reach every part of the meat evenly. Regular turning keeps the brine and cure in contact with all surfaces, so the beef cures uniformly rather than unevenly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, sugar, clove, corn, allspice, nutmeg, 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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