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Hunter's, or Spiced Beef
Take a round of beef weighing from fifteen to twenty pounds. Let it hang a day or two; then rub it well with a powder made by pounding together one pound of salt, an ounce and a half of saltpetre, half an ounce of allspice, half an ounce of black pepper, two ounces of moist sugar, and a tea-spoonful of herb-powder, if this be in the house; if not, it may be omitted. Take out the bone, and turn and rub the meat every day for a fortnight. At the end of that time wash it well with a soft sponge, put it into a stewpan, just cover it with water, bring it to a boil, and let it simmer gently for five hours. It may remain in the water in which it was cooked until it is nearly cold, if it is intended to be used at once; but though this will improve the taste, it will prevent its keeping so long. The beef is better if kept uncut until cold. It will keep a fortnight or more in moderate weather. It is an excellent plan, instead of boiling the beef, to bake it. Put it into a pan with a sliced onion, a quart of water, and nearly three pounds of beef or mutton-suet cut small and placed on the top of the beef. Cover with a coarse flour and water paste, and bake in a moderate oven. When cold, take off the crust; pour off the gravy, which will be found excellent for soups and sauces. Put the suet into an earthen jar, and melt it slowly in a moderate oven. Pour it off frequently as it melts. It may be used for frying, etc. Time, six hours to bake. Probable cost, 11d. per pound.
This is a two-week ambient-temperature dry cure built on saltpetre, and the quantities and conditions sit well outside anything modern food safety would sanction. The notes below explain where it fails rather than how to rescue it.
- The saltpetre is far out of rangeAn ounce and a half of saltpetre works out at roughly 10 oz per 100 lb of meat on a fifteen-pound round, or about 7.5 oz per 100 lb on a twenty-pound one. Current limits for potassium or sodium nitrate in a dry cure are several times lower, and nitrate at this level in a home cure is not something that can be dialled back by eye.
- No temperature is given for the fortnightThe meat is turned and rubbed daily for two weeks in whatever the larder happens to be. Curing safety depends on the salt penetrating faster than spoilage and botulism organisms can establish, and that race is decided by temperature, which this recipe never mentions.
- A round of fifteen to twenty pounds is a slow cureSalt migrates into a thick, boned round very slowly. A surface rub on a joint of this size leaves the deep centre under-cured for days, which is precisely the zone where anaerobic risk lives.
- "Keep a fortnight or more in moderate weather"The keeping claim depends on cool storage conditions the recipe never specifies beyond that phrase. Cooked beef held unrefrigerated for two weeks is not a shelf-stable product by any current standard.
- The suet crust and rendering are period economy, not preservationThe three pounds of suet laid over the beef, the flour-and-water paste, and the fat poured off for frying are about basting and thrift. None of it contributes to the safety of the cure.
- If you want spiced beefUse a current recipe with weighed curing salt, a stated percentage of the meat's weight, and a refrigerated cure at a specified temperature. Nothing in this version can be scaled to that safely.
- Reading the originalMoist sugar is soft brown sugar; herb-powder is a dried mixed-herb blend, which the recipe itself treats as optional ("if this be in the house; if not, it may be omitted"); 11d. per pound is the price in pre-decimal pence, a useful marker of what beef cost the household rather than any instruction.
Hunter's beef belongs to the long British tradition of spiced and salted rounds kept ready in the cold larder for cutting at supper, on journeys, or at Christmas. The name is generally traced to the shooting and hunting household, where a large cured joint could be sliced cold for anyone coming in late from the field; closely related versions survive as Cumberland spiced beef and as the Irish spiced beef still sold around Cork at Christmas. Saltpetre was commonly used in these recipes, valued as much for keeping the meat a bright red as for its preservative effect, and Victorian cookery books prescribed it freely by the ounce. Cassell's offers the baked variant with its suet blanket and flour paste as the better method, and characteristically accounts for every by-product: the gravy goes to soups, the melted suet to the frying pan, nothing thrown away.