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Hunters Beef

A preserved beef cured with saltpetre, sugar, spices, and suet, baked slowly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice 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 ↓

Hunters Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Cure the beef

  1. Hang the beef for 2-3 days.

  2. Grind saltpetre, sugar, cloves, nutmeg, allspice, and coarse sea salt into a fine powder.

  3. Bone the beef and rub the spice mixture into it daily for 2-3 weeks.

  4. Wash off the spices with cold water.

Bake and serve

  1. Bind the beef tightly with tape.

  2. Place the beef in a pan with 1 teacup of water at the bottom.

  3. Cover the beef with chopped suet.

  4. Seal the pan with a coarse paste and brown paper.

  5. Bake for 5 hours.

  6. Let it cool.

  7. Remove the paste and tape.

  8. Optionally, stuff the hole left by the bone with chopped parsley and sweet herbs.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

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 during long, slow baking.
Saltpetre
Cures the meat, helping it keep its colour and resist spoilage during the rub period.
Sugar
Balances the salt in the cure and adds mild sweetness to the meat.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the meat and seasons it during the curing rub.
Suet
Adds fat that bastes the beef and keeps it moist while it bakes.

The step that matters

Sealing the pan with the paste. A tight seal traps steam and moisture so the beef cooks gently in its own juices over the long bake instead of drying out.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, sugar, clove, nutmeg, allspice):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

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