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Pickled Meat No. 1

A brine of water, salt, sugar, molasses, baking soda, and saltpetre is used to pickle meat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and molasses are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,225 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Pickled Meat No. 1

Ingredients

Directions

Make the brine

  1. Boil the water and skim it while boiling.

  2. Mix in the coarse salt, brown sugar, molasses, and baking soda.

  3. Allow the brine to cool.

Pack and cover

  1. Tightly pack the meat in a container.

  2. Pour the cooled brine over the meat.

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. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + meattop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,866 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Molasses + meattop 37% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together441 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Coarse salt
Draws moisture out of the meat and seasons it, helping preserve it through brining.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the saltiness of the brine.
Molasses
Adds color, moisture, and a deep, mildly bitter sweetness to the brine.
Baking soda
Raises the brine's pH, which can help keep the meat's color and texture in the brine.

The step that matters

Cool the brine before pouring it over the meat. Hot brine would partly cook the surface of the meat and change its texture unevenly, so it should be cooled before it touches the meat.

“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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