The Complete And Fascinating History Of Corned Beef

Preparing beef for consumption by means of preserving it first through large quantities of salt goes back at least more than 1,300 years. The "Crith Gablach" is a collection of some of the earliest guidelines and laws in Ireland, and was assembled around the year 700 A.D. Bosall, or salted beef, rates a mention. According to "Irish Corned Beef: A Culinary History," there were no salt mines in Ireland, so the salt used for beef preservation was derived by burning seaweed, plentiful in and around the island civilization. Lighting seaweed aflame and turning it to ash allows the salt to be separated out, and that was used to treat meat.

Additionally, the 12th century Irish poem "Aislinge Meic Con Glinne" mentions the use of salt in the preparation of beef, as well as pork, specifically bacon. In ancient times, beef was salted and then left to set in holes dug out of peat bogs, which was also the method by which Irish farmers would preserve butter. Nevertheless, beef wasn't a regularly eaten food among average Irish people in the Middle Ages. Cows were valued as dairy animals and beasts of burden, and considered sacred in Irish-Gaelic culture. By and large, cows were slaughtered only when necessary, after they'd grown too old to be useful in other ways. 

When England took over Ireland in the 16th century, it soon enacted a series of rules called Penal Laws. The population of Ireland primarily adhered to Roman Catholicism, and after the spread of the Reformation — a religious movement that established Protestant Christianity in direct opposition to the Catholic Church — England passed laws to penalize practitioners of the old faith. English authorities took the land of Irish citizens away and set up plantations that looked like the old lords-and-tenants, feudal system.

The occupying government essentially turned much of Ireland into English farmland, with the local farmers ordered to grow as much beef as possible. The meat had been a dietary staple in England since the time of Roman rule 1,500 years earlier, and Irish farmers helped meet the demand on the other side of the Irish Sea. While much of that beef would be corned beef, Irish people didn't eat a lot of the stuff at this time. Not only had beef not been a major part of the Irish diet traditionally, but they couldn't afford it — it was out of the price range of the low-waged local workforce. The potato was a main source for sustenance in Ireland during English rule, and if on the rare occasion meat was consumed, it was bacon or salted pork, which were significantly less expensive to raise and purchase than was beef.

The corned beef sold in grocery stores and sliced into sandwiches at shops and butcher counters across the United States follows the Jewish deli tradition. That means it's made out of the brisket cut of beef — a substantial and meaty portion found in the front or breast area of a cow. Simple cooking or roasting isn't enough to make brisket edible or enjoyable. In its role as a major element of Texas barbecue, brisket is slow-cooked or smoked to make it soft and tender. To transform the naturally tough brisket into smooth and chewable corned beef, it's treated with large amounts of salt or left in a heavily salted brine solution.

But that's just modern, Jewish deli-style corned beef. Traditionally, in Irish cuisine, the cut used to make what would eventually become corned beef was silverside. Found on the cow's hindquarters, silverside is so named because it's covered in a silver-colored membrane. Because cows in the 20th century United States are butchered in a different way than they were in Ireland hundreds of years ago, silverside isn't a standard cut of beef in 2020s America. As far as taste and consistency go, it's similar to rump roast or topside.

Corned beef and pastrami are very identical meats. Both are made of beef, taste salty, finish the production process in a shade of pink, and are sliced thin and piled high in sandwiches popularized by traditional Jewish delis. But corned beef and pastrami are decidedly not the same. Corned beef starts with brisket, a cut from the breast part of the cow. It's cured with a salt-based brine mixture that imparts flavor via the addition of herbs and spices like mustard seed, coriander, cloves, allspice, and peppercorns. The salt tenderizes the brisket, transforming it from a tough and chewy cut into something quite soft and tender.

Pastrami is made with a similar salt-and-spice curing process. However, it originates with a cut of beef culled from a completely different part of the cow. The deli favorite starts out as a shoulder cut called deckle, or, alternately navel meat, found below the cow's ribs. That meat is dried, rubbed down with spices, and then, it's smoked. Corned beef differs in that final step in that it's boiled.

Corned beef originated in Ireland, but was popularized by the governing English, who also gave the dish its name. English industrialists similarly helped spread canned corned beef to all corners of the world, and that's the form of the food that seems to have resonated most in the British cultural consciousness. If one were to order a corned beef sandwich in the U.K., they wouldn't get salted whole brisket, thinly sliced and stacked tall between two pieces of bread. They'd receive one made with the mushy, Spam-like canned stuff, and probably also topped with vinegar or a pickled chutney. To receive a familiar corned beef sandwich in the U.K., diners ought to scour the menu for a salt beef sandwich.

The salt beef sandwich, or a corned beef sandwich, is synonymous with another kind of specialty dish, the Reuben. Sometimes made with pastrami but traditionally with corned beef, that sandwich was invented in Omaha, Nebraska, in the 1920s. Chef Bernard Schimmel of the Blackstone Hotel came up with the idea to feed some gathered hungry poker players. One of them was named Reuben Kulakofsky, and he's the namesake for the sandwich consisting of corned beef, Swiss cheese, Russian dressing, and sauerkraut on rye bread.

The influence of an American president can be substantial, and the popularity of corned beef in the United States could be traced in part to the approval of the Commander-in-Chief. According to Mount Vernon, now a museum but what was once the residence of President George Washington before the White House opened, first lady Martha Washington served cold corned beef to guests for breakfast. And on the day of Abraham Lincoln's first presidential inauguration in March 1865 — right around St. Patrick's Day — he ate corned beef and cabbage for lunch, according to the Wall Street Journal. President Grover Cleveland, according to the Cape Cod Times, requested a meal of corned beef and cabbage in lieu of his scheduled dinner one night when he could smell it cooking in the servants' kitchen.

In 2010, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, President Barack Obama became embroiled in a corned beef scandal. It was frowned upon by culinary purists when Obama visited a deli in Miami and reportedly ordered a corned beef sandwich with mayonnaise. A representative of the White House later declared that the writer who filed the story had made an error, and that the president had ordered a more proper corned beef with mustard for himself; the mayo-slathered one had been for his campaign companion, Rep. Kendrick Meek.