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Spiced Beef

A beef dish cured with saltpetre, sugar, sea salt, common salt, pepper, and optional treacle, cloves, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Spiced Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil water slowly and press it under a heavy weight while hot.

  2. Trim the edges of the beef slice.

Cure the beef

  1. Rub 2 oz of saltpetre and 2 oz of coarse sugar into the meat and let it sit for 2 days.

  2. After 2 days, rub 1 lb of coarse sea salt, 4 oz of common salt, and 1 oz of pepper into the meat and let it sit for 4 days.

  3. If desired, rub in ¾ lb of coarse sugar and optionally omit the treacle.

  4. For added flavor, include cloves and mace in the same proportion as for spiced beef.

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 + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

  4. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Beef + clovetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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
The main meat, which the cure penetrates and firms over the resting period.
Saltpetre
Helps the cured meat keep its pink colour and gives it a characteristic cured flavour.
Coarse sugar
Balances the saltiness and adds mild sweetness to the cure.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the meat and seasons it, helping preserve it during curing.
Common salt
Adds further salt that draws out moisture and seasons the meat through the cure.

The step that matters

Resting the meat between salt rubs. Salt needs days to draw out moisture and diffuse evenly into thick meat. Skipping or shortening the rest leaves the centre under-seasoned and unevenly cured.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, sugar, pepper, mace):

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

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