Skip to main content
Main

To Cure Beef for Drying

Cures beef with saltpetre, fine salt, and molasses for drying.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Molasses and sugar 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 ↓

To Cure Beef for Drying

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cure

  1. Mix saltpetre, fine salt, and molasses until the color resembles brown sugar.

Cure the beef

  1. Rub the mixture onto the beef pieces thoroughly.

  2. Pack the beef in a keg or half barrel, ensuring the pickle covers the meat.

  3. Let it sit for 48 hours to allow the pickle to cover the meat.

Dry the beef

  1. After 48 hours, remove the beef and hang it in a suitable place to dry.

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. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Beef + molassestop 35% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together606 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. 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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Is the meat that is cured and then dried, so it becomes preserved.
Saltpetre
Helps preserve the meat and gives the cured beef its characteristic color.
Fine salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat, helping to preserve it.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and brown color to the cure, so the mixture resembles brown sugar.

The step that matters

Packing the beef so the pickle covers the meat. Meat left partly exposed above the pickle can spoil or cure unevenly, because salt and curing agents only penetrate properly where they are in contact with the surface.

“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.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes