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Hambourg or Dutch Beef

This recipe uses saltpetre.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Beef and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 37% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,435 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Hambourg or Dutch Beef

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Remove all the fat from the beef.

  2. Rub the beef with sugar, coarse sea salt, and saltpetre.

  3. Turn the beef daily for 12 to 15 days.

  4. Drain and wipe the beef, then enclose it in a cloth and press it.

  5. Smoke the beef in the fumes of damped sweet hay for 3 days.

  6. To serve, cut it into rashers and broil, or toss in butter.

  7. If cooking whole, boil wrapped in a cloth for 2 hours.

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 + 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

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