Name: Cured Brisket of Beef for Christmas
Ingredients: 14 pounds brisket of beef; 1 ounce saltpetre, pounded very fine; ½ pound sugar; 4 handfuls coarse sea salt; suet, chopped fine; water

Why it works: Beef and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 37% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,435 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Cured Brisket of Beef for Christmas

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Cure the beef

Rub the brisket with saltpetre at night.
Mix sugar and coarse sea salt, then rub the mixture over the beef the next morning.
Let the beef sit in the pickle for two weeks.
Turn the beef daily.
Rub the beef daily.

Bake and serve

After two weeks, place the beef in an earthen pan with chopped suet covering the bottom.
Cover the top of the beef with more chopped suet and add a little water to prevent burning.
Bake slowly at 300°F (150°C) for six hours.
Serve cold.

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.

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

Brisket of beef: Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender and firm during slow cooking.
Saltpetre: Gives the cured meat its characteristic pink colour and helps preserve it.
Sugar: Balances the salt and softens the savour of the cured beef.
Coarse sea salt: Draws out moisture and seasons the meat during the cure.
Suet: Covers the meat during baking, adding fat and moisture to keep it from drying out.

The step that matters

Bake slowly at 300°F (150°C) for six hours. Low, slow heat lets the tough connective tissue in the brisket break down gradually, producing tender meat; higher heat would toughen and dry it. The added water and suet protect the surface from burning.

“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.