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To Collar Beef

A beef dish prepared by marinating with egg yolks, parsley, mace, pepper, salt, and then boiling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

To Collar Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Salt the beef and beat it as before.

  2. Rub the beef with the yolks of eggs.

  3. Sprinkle two large handfuls of chopped parsley over it.

  4. Add ½ ounce of mace, black pepper, and coarse sea salt to taste.

  5. Roll the beef tightly and bind it with broad tape.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the beef until tender.

  2. Make a pickle for it as before.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Parsley + macetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,268 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Beef + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,866 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender and sliceable after long boiling.
Yolks of eggs
Add richness and help the seasonings and herbs cling to the meat's surface.
Parsley
Adds fresh, green, herbal aroma that balances the rich meat.
Mace
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavour to the meat.

The step that matters

Boil the beef until tender. Beef is a tough cut rich in connective tissue. Slow, gentle simmering converts collagen to gelatin, which makes the meat tender and moist. Boiling too hard can toughen the outer layer and leave the centre firm, so keep the liquid at a gentle simmer and test for tenderness before removing it.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Macethe original

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