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Collared Beef

A flank of beef rolled with saltpetre, sea salt, pepper, allspice, parsley, and butter, then boiled for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Collared Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Remove the inside skin, bones, and gristle from the flank beef.

  2. Rub the beef with saltpetre and coarse sea salt, then let it brine for 4 days.

  3. Wash and dry the beef, then rub it with pepper and allspice.

Stuff and roll

  1. Mix some pepper and allspice with chopped parsley and stuff it into the beef.

  2. Add 1 ounce of fresh butter inside the beef and strew more parsley mixture over it.

  3. Roll the beef tightly in a cloth and tie it securely.

Cook and press

  1. Boil the beef slowly for 5 hours.

  2. After boiling, let it sit in the cloth for 15 minutes.

  3. Remove the cloth and press the beef with a weight until cold.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Allspice + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Flank beef
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender and sliceable after long slow cooking.
Saltpetre
Helps cure the meat and gives it a pink color during the long brine.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the beef during the brine, firming its texture.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and moisture inside the rolled beef as it cooks.

The step that matters

Boil the beef slowly for 5 hours. A gentle simmer keeps the meat tender and prevents the outside from toughening or breaking apart. Boiling hard would make the meat dry and stringy.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, parsley, butter):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, parsley, butter. 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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