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Hunters' Beef

A cured beef rubbed with spices, suet, and flour paste, then baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Hunters' Beef

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 the beef

  1. Mix all ingredients together.

  2. Rub the mixture well into the round of beef every day for three weeks.

Wrap and bake

  1. Bind the beef tightly and cover the top with suet and a thick paste of flour and water.

  2. Bake in a good oven at 350°F (175°C) for 15 minutes per pound.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Saltpetre
Cures the meat, helping preserve it and giving it a pink colour.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat during the long cure.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the salty, spiced cure.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic flavour to the beef.
Nutmeg
Adds warm, aromatic flavour that deepens the spice blend.

The step that matters

Rubbing the cure in every day. The cure works by slowly drawing into the meat over time. Missing days or rubbing unevenly leaves parts of the beef under-cured and unevenly seasoned, so the full three weeks of daily rubbing matters.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Cardamomfits less well
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, clove, allspice, 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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