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Collared Beef

A beef flank cured in brine, spiced, smoked, and optionally boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Collared Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Cut the flank of beef into a square or oblong shape.

  2. Remove the inner skin from the flank of beef.

Cure

  1. Make a brine with coarse sea salt and water to float an egg.

  2. Soak the meat in the brine for one week.

  3. Remove the meat from the brine.

  4. Dry the meat well.

  5. Rub the meat with finely powdered saltpetre.

  6. Soak the meat in the brine for another week.

  7. Wipe the meat completely dry.

Season, roll and smoke

  1. Mix white pepper, nutmeg, mace, cloves, and shallots into a paste.

  2. Spread the paste over the inner side of the meat.

  3. Roll the beef tightly.

  4. Tie the rolled beef with tape.

  5. Hang the beef to smoke for two weeks.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil a portion of the beef in water with one-tenth part vinegar until tender.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Nutmeg + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Clove + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flank of beef
Forms the meat that is cured, rolled and eventually sliced and boiled.
Coarse sea salt
Salts the meat in the brine, drawing out moisture and seasoning it through curing.
Saltpetre
Helps the meat keep its pink colour during curing and preserves it.
White pepper
Adds pungent, peppery aroma to the spiced paste on the inner side of the meat.
Nutmeg
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the paste spread inside the rolled beef.
Shallots
Add mild onion-like flavour to the spice paste that coats the inside of the meat.

The step that matters

Dry the meat well before spreading the paste. Surface moisture keeps the spice paste from adhering and can encourage spoilage during the long smoking period. Thorough drying helps the paste stay in place and the meat keep well.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, egg, nutmeg, mace, clove, shallot, vinegar):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, egg, nutmeg, mace, clove, shallot, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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