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Pressed Corned Beef

A method of curing and pressing beef in a salt brine for several days, then boiling and compressing it.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 31% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,305 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Pressed Corned Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Make the brine

  1. Make a brine with water and enough coarse sea salt to float an egg.

  2. Add 2 oz of saltpetre to the brine.

Cure and cook

  1. Salt the meat for 10 to 14 days.

  2. Boil the salted meat slowly for 5 to 6 hours.

Press

  1. Bone the meat and stuff it into cotton sacks.

  2. Press the sacks between boards and weigh them down.

  3. Let it stand for 12 hours, then clean off the fat from the sacks.

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. Egg + beeftop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Plate and flank beef
Forms the meat that becomes the pressed corned beef, the main substance of the dish.
Saltpetre
Helps keep the cured meat pink and gives it its characteristic cured flavour.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the meat and seasons it during the long cure.

The step that matters

Salt the meat for 10 to 14 days. The brine must stay strong enough to cure the meat evenly through its thickness. Salt penetrates slowly, so a weak or short cure leaves the centre under-seasoned and less well preserved.

“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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