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Published 2014
Elizabeth David (1970) remarks that beef prepared in such a way has also been called Hunting Beef or Beef à l’écarlate, and that various forms of the recipe have been known in England for at least 300 years. Her prescription involves brown sugar, saltpetre, sea or rock salt, black peppercorns, allspice, and juniper berries; she gives characteristically precise instructions for cooking the beef, commenting that it ‘will carve thinly and evenly, and has a rich, mellow, spicy flavour which does seem to convey to us some sort of idea of the food eaten by our forbears’.