Skip to main content
Main

Cured Beef, to Eat Cold

A beef cured in a mixture of sugar, salt, spices, and water, then left to cure for 2–3 weeks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cured Beef, to Eat Cold

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pickle

  1. In a large pot, combine the sugar, coarse sea salt, allspice, cloves, saltpetre, cochineal, and water.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil and let it simmer for 20 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and allow the mixture to cool completely.

Cure the beef

  1. Place the beef in a container and pour the cooled pickle over it.

  2. Turn the beef once or twice a day for 2 to 3 weeks.

  3. After this time, the beef will be ready to eat.

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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + beeftop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Allspice + beeftop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,940 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Sugar + allspicetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,938 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Sugar + clovetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and clove barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 17,182 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the meat and seasons it while helping preserve it during the cure.
Sugar
Balances the salt and adds mild sweetness to the cured beef.
Saltpetre
Helps the beef keep its pink colour during long curing.
Beef
The main cut that absorbs the pickle and becomes tender and cured over the weeks.

The step that matters

Let the pickle cool completely before adding the beef. Pouring hot brine over raw meat would partly cook the surface and set it unevenly, and it can encourage spoilage, so the pickle must be cold before it touches the beef.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Gingerfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, allspice, beef. 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.

You might also like

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