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Savoury Salt Beef Baked

A beef tongue side of a round is salted, spiced, and baked with suet and onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,620 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Savoury Salt Beef Baked

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. Hang the beef for 2-3 days.

  2. Pound together saltpetre, sugar, black pepper, allspice, ginger, and common salt.

  3. Rub the mixture into the meat, turning and rubbing it daily for 14 days.

Cook and serve

  1. When ready to cook, place the meat in a pan with water and cover with shredded mutton suet and minced onions.

  2. Cover the pan with a pastry crust and bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 6 hours, or stew gently for 5 hours.

  3. Serve garnished with finely chopped parsley.

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. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Allspice + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender through long, slow cooking.
Saltpetre
Cures the meat, helping it keep its pink colour and adding a cured flavour.
Common salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat during the long curing period.
Sugar
Balances the salt and adds mild sweetness to the cured meat.
Mutton suet
Adds fat that bastes the meat and enriches its moisture and flavour as it cooks.
Onions
Add aroma and sweetness to the cooking liquid as they soften.

The step that matters

Rubbing the cure in daily for 14 days. The cure must penetrate the whole piece of meat evenly. Skipping days or leaving the meat unturned can leave parts under-cured, so the salt and saltpetre do not reach the centre and the curing stays uneven.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, sugar, pepper, allspice, ginger, mutton, parsley):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, sugar, pepper, allspice, ginger, mutton, parsley. 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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