Skip to main content
Main

To Collar Beef

A cured beef roll with bacon, corned pork, herbs, and spices, boiled after marinating in a salt‑sugar pickle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

To Collar Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Cure the beef

  1. Make a pickle with ½ cup brown sugar, ¼ cup common salt, and 1 tablespoon saltpetre.

  2. Submerge the flank of beef in the pickle for 10 days, turning it daily.

Prepare the flank

  1. Remove the bone and gristle, leaving the outer skin intact.

  2. Place the beef skin‑side down and pound the inside with a rolling pin until tender.

  3. Score the flesh in rows, about 2 fingers apart, without cutting the skin.

  4. Fill the scores alternately with slices of bacon, corned pork, chopped herbs, and spices.

  5. Roll the flank tightly and bind it with coarse tape.

Cook and finish

  1. Wrap it in a cloth and boil gently for 4 to 6 hours, depending on the size.

  2. Once cold, remove from the cloth, unbind the tape, and secure the roll with small skewers.

  3. Optionally glaze or rub with egg yolk and brown with a salamander.

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. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  2. Sugar + porktop 37% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,579 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Sugar + beeftop 37% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the salt in the cure.
Common salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the beef during the cure, firming its texture.
Saltpetre
Helps the cure keep the meat's pink colour and preserves it during curing.
Slices of fat bacon
Adds fat and richness to the filling, keeping the interior moist as it cooks.
Slices of corned pork
Adds savoury, salty flavour and fat to the filling.
Egg yolk (in the method)
Gives a glossy, browned finish when brushed on before salamander browning.

The step that matters

Pound the inside until tender. Pounding breaks down muscle fibres so the flank becomes tender and rolls evenly. Too little pounding leaves it tough, and tearing the skin ruins the roll's shape during boiling.

“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.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes