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Beef Collops

A preserved beef dish pickled, seasoned, boiled, and cooled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,866 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Beef Collops

Ingredients

Directions

Cure

  1. Mix the sugar, coarse sea salt, and saltpetre.

  2. Place the beef in the mixture and let it pickle for 7 to 10 days, turning and rubbing it daily.

  3. Bone the beef, removing all gristle and coarse skin.

Season and roll

  1. Sprinkle the beef thickly with minced parsley, herbs, spices, and seasoning.

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

Boil and press

  1. Boil the beef gently for 6 hours.

  2. After boiling, place it under a weight without unwrapping 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. Beef + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,866 recipes

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

  2. Beef + sugartop 37% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,435 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + parsleytop 39% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,535 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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 firm and sliceable once cooked.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the saltiness of the cure.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the meat and seasons it during the cure.
Saltpetre
Helps the beef keep its pink colour during curing.

The step that matters

Gentle boiling. Boiling too hard toughens the meat and can break up the fibres, so the beef should simmer gently for the full six hours to stay tender and hold its shape.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Pepperfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, sugar. 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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