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Breakfast Beef

A preserved beef cured with saltpetre, salt, sugar, and sour beer, then dried and boiled or braised.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and beer work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 414 recipes. Both carry 2-methyl-3-(methyldithio)furan, which smells thiamin, meat. The science ↓

Breakfast Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Cure

  1. Wash and wipe the beef dry.

  2. Rub the beef with saltpetre, salpeter, and coarse sea salt, all finely beaten.

  3. After 2 hours, rub the beef with brown sugar.

  4. After another 2 hours, add more salt and coarse sea salt.

  5. Let the beef sit for 48 hours.

Dry and hang

  1. Drain the beef and hang it in a very dry but not warm place.

  2. In 10 days, it will be ready for use.

Cook

  1. Soak the beef in sour beer for a few hours before cooking.

  2. Boil or braise it like hunter's 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. Beef + beertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together414 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + beertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together699 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Beef + sugartop 37% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Tender beef
The main meat, which the cure penetrates and firms over the curing period.
Saltpetre
Helps preserve the meat and gives the cured beef its characteristic pink colour.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the beef and seasons it while helping preserve it.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the salt and rounds out the flavour of the cure.
Sour beer
Its acidity gives the soaked beef a tangy flavour before it is cooked.

The step that matters

Drain and hang the beef somewhere very dry but not warm. Hanging dries the surface so the cured meat keeps and does not spoil. If the place is warm or damp, the surface can spoil or grow microbes before the meat is ready.

“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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