Corned beef

Corned beef, called salted beef in some Commonwealth countries, is a salt-cured piece of beef. The term comes from the treatment of the meat with large-grained rock salt, also called "corns" of salt. Sometimes, sugar and spices are added to corned beef recipes. Corned beef is featured as an ingredient in many cuisines.

Most recipes include nitrates, which convert the natural myoglobin in beef to nitrosomyoglobin, giving it a pink color. Nitrates and nitrites reduce the risk of dangerous botulism during curing by inhibiting the growth of Clostridium botulinum bacteria spores, but react with amines in beef to form compounds that cause cancer. Beef cured without nitrates or nitrites has a gray color and is sometimes called "New England corned beef".

Tinned corned beef, alongside salt pork and hardtack, was a standard ration for many militaries and navies from the 17th through the early 20th centuries, including World War I and World War II, during which fresh meat was rationed. Corned beef remains popular worldwide as an ingredient in a variety of regional dishes and as a common part in modern field rations of various armed forces around the world.

Although the exact origin of corned beef is unknown, it most likely came about when people began preserving meat through salt-curing. Evidence of its legacy is apparent in numerous cultures, including ancient Europe and the Middle East. The word corn derives from Old English and is used to describe any small, hard particles or grains. In the case of corned beef, the word may refer to the coarse, granular salts used to cure the beef. The word "corned" may also refer to the corns of potassium nitrate, also known as saltpeter, which were formerly used to preserve the meat.

Although the practise of curing beef existed across the globe since the period of classical antiquity, the industrial production of corned beef started in the British Isles during the British Agricultural Revolution. Corned beef sourced from cattle reared in Ireland and Scotland was used extensively for civilian and military consumption throughout the British Empire beginning from the 17th century onwards due to its non-perishable nature. Irish and Scottish corned beef was also sold to the French West Indies, where it was used to feed both settlers and slaves. Industrial processes in the British Isles for producing corned beef during the 17th century did not distinguish different cuts of beef beyond the tough and undesirable parts of the cow such as the beef shank and neck. Instead, the grading was done by sorting all cuts of beef by weight into "small beef", "cargo beef" and "best mess beef", with the first being considered the worst and the last the best. "Small beef" and "cargo beef" cuts were most commonly traded to the French, while "best mess beef" were frequently intended for sale and consumption in markets throughout the British Empire.

Ireland produced a significant portion of corned beef consumed in the British Empire during the early modern period, using cattle reared locally and salt imported from the Iberian Peninsula and southern France. Irish port cities, such as Dublin, Belfast and Cork, became home to large-scale beef curing and packing industries, with Cork alone producing half of Ireland's annual beef exports in 1668. Although the consumption of corned beef carried no significant negative connotations in Europe, in European colonies in the Americas it was frequently looked upon with disdain due to being primarily consumed by poor people and slaves. American social theorist Jeremy Rifkin noted the sociopolitical effect of corned beef in the British Isles during the early modern period in his 1992 book Beyond Beef: The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture:

The British enclosure movement had displaced thousands of rural English families, creating a cheap new labour pool to fill the unskilled jobs in the industrial factories of London, Leeds, Manchester, and Bristol. Shortages of foodstuffs and rising prices were fueling discontent among the new working class and middle class of the cities, threatening open rebellion. British officials and entrepreneurs quieted the masses with Scottish and Irish beef. Historians of the period point out that were it not for the Celtic pasturelands of Scotland and Ireland, it might well have proved impossible to quell the growing unrest of the British working class during the critical decades of British industrial expansion.

Despite being a major producer of corned beef, the majority of the Irish population during this period, Catholic tenant farmers, consumed relatively little meat in their diets. This was due to a variety of factors, including the high costs of buying meat in Ireland and the ownership of the majority of Irish farms by Protestant landlords, who marked most of the corned beef produced using their cattle for export. The level of meat, including corned beef, present in the Irish diet of the period decreased in areas away from major centres for corned beef production, such as Northern Ireland, while increasing in areas such as County Cork. The majority of meat consumed by working-class Irish Catholics consisted of cheap products such as salt pork, with bacon and cabbage quickly becoming one of the most common meals in Irish cuisine.