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To Collar Beef

A preserved beef dish cured with salt, saltpetre, herbs, boiled, and pressed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

To Collar Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Cure

  1. Rub the beef with coarse sea salt and saltpetre, turning it daily for a week in a cool place.

  2. Remove all bones, gristle, and skin from the beef.

Season and roll

  1. Cover the beef thickly with the chopped herbs, pepper, salt, and allspice.

  2. Roll the beef tightly and bind it with a cloth.

Cook and press

  1. Boil the beef gently for 7 to 8 hours.

  2. Press the beef under a weight while hot, keeping it wrapped in the cloth to maintain its shape.

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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Sage + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together507 recipes

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

  3. Sage + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,485 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Flank of beef
Provides the meat that is cured, rolled and cooked into a sliceable joint.
Saltpetre
Helps preserve the meat and gives it a characteristic pink colour during curing.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the beef and seasons it during the week-long cure.
Parsley
Adds fresh, green herbal flavour to the seasoning coating the outside of the roll.
Sage
Contributes a savoury, aromatic flavour to the herb coating.
Thyme
Adds earthy, aromatic flavour that complements the beef.

The step that matters

Keeping the roll tight and wrapped while pressing. Pressing hot meat under a weight while it is still warm lets it set into a compact shape as it cools. If the roll is loose or unwrapped, it can spread and lose its form, so the cloth must stay on to hold it firm.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Winter savoryfits better
  2. Rosemaryfits better
  3. Oreganofits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, parsley, sage, thyme, marjoram, 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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