Old Recipes

[wheels]

I'm working on an article for my blog about using recipes from old books etc.

I know I'm not the only one who looks to the past, for inspiration for the future. But what are the main things that you look at when you want to 'convert' a recipe?

Recently, I was very surprised that people with a great deal of curing experience didn't understand that old recipes for cures may not be best suited to modern usage.

Perhaps it's me?

Phil

[quietwatersfarm]

Not you at all Phil, I am dealing with it all the time. (btw, thought you dealt with things very well )

Apart from bringing down the content of cure, modern tastes tend to like less salt - those are the most obvious ones.

What is also interesting is how old recipes were often far spicier than people would tend to think, showing a preference and willingness that in fact is less prevalent now in terms of mainstream 'best sellers'.

Lot more ginger, pimento, ground coriander, mace around in the old days.

What I struggle with teh most -and would appreciate your experienced views on - is getter ingredients like saltpeter at correct levels for safety whilst still utilising the flavour giving aspects adequately to keep that old fashioned taste.

[vagreys]

Phil, that's exactly why I built my recipe analyzer in Excel. I look at a number of things when I evaluate recipes, including other current redactions of old recipes - amount of lean vs fat, amount of bread/rusk, salt level, spice levels, and nitrate/nitrite ppm. I also look at things like cure time, rest/soak times, maturing times. If a recipe calls for saltpetre, I convert for Cure #2 and modern limits. If I'm dealing with a modern recipe that uses binders and accelerators, I check levels of phosphates, erythorbate, etc. I always recalculate cure to correct excessive nitrite/nitrate content.

[Thewitt]

With regards to spice levels in older recipes, I wonder if it's related to the quality of the meat.

I've noticed that here in Malaysia, the market meats have quite a strong odor to them, and I tend to need more spice to keep that odor from dominating the product.

Meat that has been grain fed prior to slaughter will have a different taste and odor when compared to meet that has gone straight from pasture to market.

[wheels]

Sorry not to respond sooner, but things have been a bit hectic here. I'll reply fully soon.

Phil

[wheels]

Just to be able to 'hang the topic on something', here's a classic old recipe:



Here's the numbers:

• It weighs 30lb. I assume that by 'round' it means it's a big lump of topside/silverside/top rump.
• It cures for 27 days and can then be used immediately.
• The cure rate works out at 191gm per kg

Worked out as if it absorbed all the cure, it would have:

• 3120 PPM Nitrate, 10% salt and 6.67% sugar.

It begs the following questions:

• Could 30lb meat be cured right through in 27 days with no period to equalise?
• What's the maximum 'pick up' of salt etc per kg i.e.of the 191gm per kg how much will be absorbed?
• Given that it doesn't mention soaking, does this mean that the 'pick up' is a palatable level, or does it just assume that we know to soak it?
• Are those herb levels for real? 3oz of bay - that 14 packets of Schwartz - if there's only 10 leaves a pack (and I'd think there'd be more) that's 140 bay leaves!

I made this in Feb/March 2012 using just over 1kg of beef rump. Rough figures for the cure, had the meat have been 1kg, would be:

Salt 19gm
Sugar 13gm
Saltpetre 0.2gm (200PPM)
All added at the start, along with:
3.3gm UK Cure #1 (194PPM)

The spices were added a week later:
Juniper 11 gm
Allspice 11 gm
Shallots 10
Ground B.P 17 gm
Bay gm 7 gm
Garlic heads 2

It was cured for a total of 30 days, left to mature for 6 days, then smoked over a period of 3 days.

Some of the meat was OK, but the rest hadn't cured properly, even with the added Cure #1:

To me, that's a 'lack of equalisation' problem. So, as for the original 30lb piece of meat curing in the same time?

And here, as I see it, lies one of the problems with reducing the saltpetre. Had I been relying on just saltpetre, I can only assume it would have been worse. As it was, I used both more saltpetre, and more cure #1, than the EU laws permit. This was deliberate; the cure was based around an ingoing 500mg/kg combined nitrite/nitrate when expressed as saltpetre.

QWF, you asked about saltpetre and I'm sure you're correct that it contributes to the taste. Does the 178 mg/kg (PPM) allowed in the EU regs (178 PPM KNO3 is 150PPM expressed as NaNO3 as per the regs) give enough for flavour, or for adequate curing for that matter? Particularly if the bacterial action is poor and conversion to nitrite low. Is the flavour from the converted, or unconverted, saltpetre or both?

Now, I don't want us to get bogged down with the fact that this cure didn't take very well, I'd far sooner we concentrated on the other issues raised.

In sure that a myriad of other questions will spring to mind that are worthy of discussion...

...and that's before we get on to brine cures!

Phil

[quietwatersfarm]

this is really good stuff to look at. More thoughts in detail later but just one other thought...source material.

We assume these old books were giving a careful and detailed account of the process but were they? when you read cook books today, even by leading lights in the field (Fergus, Hugh, Hix et al) they all make simple mistakes when it comes to curing that suddenly makes you wonder if their knowledge of the subject is limited to what they overheard someone else talking about in a pub and managed to scribble on a beermat.

This might explain mention of important factors like equalization and soaking being omitted in what could otherwise be a great recipe (Saltpeter notwithstanding. 3120 ppm is some real flavour!!!)

[wheels]

I fully agree. That one's from the book titled: "The Art and Mystery of Curing, Preserving and Potting all kinds of Meat, Game and Fish; and also the Art of Pickling and the Preservation of Fruits and Vegetables. Adapted as well for the wholesale dealer as all housekeepers."

This snappily titled book is available on Google Books. I came across it when 'researching' Melton Hunt Beef.

It's the: "The recipe's got massive amounts of everything, but the meat can't absorb it all", that results in the 3120ppm calculation, that's bugging me. In reality there's no-way the meat can absorb 191gm per kg; the $64,000 question is: "How much does it absorb".

Phil

[BriCan]

There are things that are obvious and a few that needs some thought, if I start into this now I will keep on going and that means forgoing desperately needed sleep

I will put my thoughts down on paper over the next few days and unless you have solved the mystery I will post by the weekend -- if that is alright

[RodinBangkok]

With regards to spice levels in older recipes, I wonder if it's related to the quality of the meat.

I've noticed that here in Malaysia, the market meats have quite a strong odor to them, and I tend to need more spice to keep that odor from dominating the product.

Meat that has been grain fed prior to slaughter will have a different taste and odor when compared to meet that has gone straight from pasture to market.

That can be due to what type of feed they are using when feeding them out. Many years ago it was not uncommon here to get what we called fish bacon, as they were using fish meal to feed out the hogs. That's pretty much history here now. I think one of the biggest factors is the vanilla pork today has all the flavor bred out in lieu of production cost savings and mass appeal. That has to effect the overall taste differences that you'd see when using old recipes. Much like the fish meal that used to be used here, there must be a lot of differences in what was fed to hogs during the time of the writing of a lot of the very old recipes.

[quietwatersfarm]

QWF, you asked about saltpetre and I'm sure you're correct that it contributes to the taste. Does the 178 mg/kg (PPM) allowed in the EU regs (178 PPM KNO3 is 150PPM expressed as NaNO3 as per the regs) give enough for flavour, or for adequate curing for that matter? Particularly if the bacterial action is poor and conversion to nitrite low. Is the flavour from the converted, or unconverted, saltpetre or both?

this is pivotal.

genuinely not sure. I guess I have assumed flavour is mainly from unconverted saltpetre but now wondering why I have assumed that?!

[BriCan]

QWF, you asked about saltpetre and I'm sure you're correct that it contributes to the taste. Does the 178 mg/kg (PPM) allowed in the EU regs (178 PPM KNO3 is 150PPM expressed as NaNO3 as per the regs) give enough for flavour, or for adequate curing for that matter? Particularly if the bacterial action is poor and conversion to nitrite low. Is the flavour from the converted, or unconverted, saltpetre or both?

this is pivotal.

genuinely not sure. I guess I have assumed flavour is mainly from unconverted saltpetre but now wondering why I have assumed that?!

It's from the converted ~~~~ it's the thing that gives you the 'bacon' flavour when making/curing bacon. Use too little and the pork/beef flavour comes through ~~ not much but its there

[quietwatersfarm]

so if its from already converted curing agent it would follow that nitrite made from Saltpetre therefore tastes different from nitrite created by an alternative agent. This seemed unlikely to me I guess and had assumed that the residual (effectively excess) saltpetre was giving me that unique flavour.

If its not the case then its something specific saltpetre does to the meat as it converts to nitrite that is missing when another cure does its thing.

I guess I have always associated 'that' taste with old school products/recipes that we now know had excess levels to that which was actually required for curing per se.

[quietwatersfarm]

It has been suggested that the taste we are referring to here may be the potassium? worth looking into.

[wheels]

Just to throw in another complication, Is it possible that nitrite from Sodium has a different taste to nitrite from potassium? Sorry, QWF, I'd missed where you said you doubted this above.

I guess that a trial with some 'Lo Salt Reduced Sodium Salt' would be a way of finding out whether the flavour's from potassium.

Regrettably, I'm not able to do as much experimenting as I used to be. Not only that, but my taste buds, that used to be able to pick out individual spices in sausage etc, seem to have 'gone walkabout' since I gave up smoking (quite the opposite to what I was told would happen ), so I'm not really in a position to do this.

On the other matter, any ideas on the maximum pick up of salt etc? Say, a 1kg lump of pork was covered with salt for 3 weeks or so, what do we reckon the % salt would be.

Phil

Edited 21:49 after re-reading prev posts