Skip to main content

To Press Beef

Contains saltpetre, which may pose food safety risks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sage and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 507 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

To Press Beef

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Salt the brisket, flank, or ribs with coarse sea salt and saltpetre for five days.

  2. Boil the meat gently until extremely tender.

  3. Place the meat under a heavy weight or in a cheese press until perfectly cold.

  4. For oollab beef, choose the thin end of the flank, rub with salt and saltpetre daily for a week.

  5. Remove bones, gristle, and skin, then cover with chopped parsley, sage, marjoram, pennyroyal, pepper, salt, and allspice.

  6. Roll the meat tightly and bind it, then boil gently for 7-8 hours.

  7. Wrap in a cloth before binding and place under weight while hot.

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. Sage + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together507 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Marjoram + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together342 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Sage + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together331 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Parsley + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,445 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, sage, marjoram, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, sage, marjoram, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes