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Hunting Beef

A beef cured with salt, saltpetre, sugar, spices, then baked in fat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Hunting Beef

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Cure

  1. Rub the beef daily for a month with the salt, saltpetre, brown sugar, coriander, cloves, mace, nutmeg, allspice, black pepper, cayenne pepper, and ginger until well mixed.

Bake and cool

  1. In a deep pan, add plenty of fat and place the beef inside, ensuring it does not touch the bottom.

  2. Cover the beef with more fat and seal the top with a thick paste of flour and water to trap steam.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for five hours.

  4. Let the beef cool completely in the pan before removing.

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. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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 beef and helps preserve it during the curing period.
Saltpetre
Helps the beef keep its pink colour during curing.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the saltiness of the cure.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, aromatic heat to the outside of the beef.
Fat for cooking
Surrounds the beef in the pan, keeping it moist as it bakes slowly.

The step that matters

Sealing the paste lid. The flour and water paste must form a tight, thick seal so steam stays inside the pan. If it cracks or leaks, the beef dries out during the long bake.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, coriander, clove, nutmeg, allspice, pepper, ginger):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, coriander, clove, nutmeg, allspice, pepper, ginger. 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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