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To Salt Beef

Curing beef by brining with salt, sugar, saltpetre, and optional cochineal.

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

To Salt Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Make the brine

  1. Boil the water with salt, sugar, and saltpetre; skim and let it cool.

  2. Immerse the beef in the cooled brine and press it with a weight to ensure it is covered.

Cure the beef

  1. Rub the beef with common salt, a small amount of saltpetre, coarse sea salt, and sugar.

  2. Optionally, add cochineal in fine powder.

  3. Rub the brine into the meat daily for a week, then turn it.

  4. It will be ready in eight days; for longer storage, drain it after sixteen days.

Finish and serve

  1. For smoking, place it in a smoke-house for a few days.

  2. Serve fresh from the brine, boiled with greens or carrots, or press it for later use.

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. Sugar + beeftop 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

Beef
Is the meat being cured, becoming firmer and seasoned throughout by the brine.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the meat and seasons it during the curing process.
Saltpetre
Helps preserve the meat and gives cured meat its characteristic pink colour.
Sugar
Balances the saltiness and softens the harshness of the cure.

The step that matters

Keeping the beef fully submerged in the brine. Any part of the meat above the liquid can spoil or cure unevenly, so the weight must keep it covered throughout the cure.

“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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