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Pressed Beef and Ham

Pressed Beef and Ham is a dish of corned beef and ham pressed together with mustard or walnut catsup, served sliced.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 865 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Pressed Beef and Ham

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Boil the corned beef and ham separately until tender.

  2. Cut off nearly all the fat and break the meat into strips immediately after removing from the water.

Press and chill

  1. Pack the strips very firmly in a mold, alternating layers with a few drops of mixed mustard or walnut catsup.

  2. Cover the mold closely with a flat surface and add heavy weights.

  3. Let it stand in a cold place overnight.

Serve

  1. When ready to serve, cut into thin slices with a very sharp knife and garnish with 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. Walnut + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together865 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Mustard + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Mustard + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Ham + mustardtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together747 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Beef + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,729 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Corned beef
Forms the main meat layers and provides the savory, salty base of the dish.
Ham
Adds a second meat layer with a milder, sweeter flavor and firm texture when pressed.
Mixed mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that cuts through the richness of the meat.
Walnut catsup
Adds tangy, savory flavor that complements the meat layers.

The step that matters

Pack the strips very firmly. Firm packing and weight remove air pockets and press the meat together, so the set loaf holds its shape and slices cleanly rather than crumbling.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, ham, mustard, parsley):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Black-eyed peafits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, ham, mustard, 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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