beef

Beef, Bos taurus, is the muscle in two recipes here, and both brown it in the pan. Abo Shalhoob uses 500 g of lean ground beef, browned in a wide pan for 6 to 8 minutes until cooked through and taking colour, then lifted out so the onions can cook in the same pan, and returned after the spices. Japanese Curry uses 500 g of chuck in 3 cm cubes, seared in batches over raised heat for 10 minutes so it colours instead of steaming, with garlic and ginger added for the last 30 seconds. The stock then goes in and the pot simmers 75 minutes with the lid ajar; chicken thigh, the recipe's alternative, needs only 25.

The Journal's note on Maillard browning explains the batches. Free water holds a surface near 100 degrees, below the range where browning runs fast, so a crowded pan steams and a rinsed piece goes pale. Browning peaks at a water activity of roughly 0.6 to 0.7, damp but neither wet nor bone dry, which the note compares to a properly rested piece of meat going into a hot pan. The reaction is a cascade, and which amino acids are present decides which aldehydes the Strecker degradation yields, so browned lamb, onion and bread do not smell alike. Pyrazines are one family of ring compounds carrying roasted aroma; thirteen alkylpyrazines had detection thresholds from 4 to 490 parts per billion.

The library traces two compounds to beef, glutamic acid as its savour and the pyrazines of the browned base. In Abo Shalhoob it is free glutamate released as the beef cooks, the deep meaty umami that lets a pan of vegetables and cracked wheat eat like a feast. The note adds one cost of browning: acrylamide, which forms from asparagine and sugars above about 120 degrees and concentrates in potatoes, crisps, bread and coffee rather than in seared meat.