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Collared Beef

Collared beef is a salted and spiced beef prepared by brining, seasoning, smoking, and boiling.

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 and remove the inner skin.

  2. Make a brine with coarse sea salt and water to float an egg, and soak the meat in it for one week.

  3. After a week, remove the meat, dry it well, and rub it with finely powdered saltpetre for another week in the brine.

  4. Wipe the meat completely dry and mix the white pepper, nutmeg, mace, cloves, and shallots into a paste.

  5. Spread the paste evenly over the inner side of the meat.

Roll, smoke and cook

  1. Roll the beef tightly and tie it with tape.

  2. Hang the beef to smoke for two weeks.

  3. To boil, place a part in water with 10% 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 main body of the dish and becomes tender when cooked slowly.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the meat and seasons it during the long brine soak.
Saltpetre
Helps the meat keep its pink colour during the long curing period.
White pepper
Adds warm, sharp seasoning to the spice paste on the meat.
Shallots
Add savoury, aromatic flavour to the spice paste.
Vinegar
Adds acidity to the cooking water, which helps soften the meat.

The step that matters

Rolling and tying the beef tightly. Loose rolling leaves gaps and uneven thickness, so the meat cooks and smokes unevenly. A firm, even roll gives a compact shape that heats and cures consistently.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, 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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