Corned Beef

All-American as beef in most forms may be, corned beef has never quite managed to shed its Old World image. Even the name sounds quaint—“corn” being a bygone English synonym for “granule,” a reference to salt as the product’s active ingredient. To complicate matters, the English themselves prefer the term “salt beef” (or “pickled beef”) to distinguish the cured brisket (or other comparable cut) found in delicatessens from the canned loaf found on supermarket shelves; in the United States, however, “corned beef” is used for both items.