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Collared Beef

A salted and boiled beef prepared by marinating with salt, saltpetre, sugar, bay leaves, and spices, then pressing and boiling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 37% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,435 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Collared Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Cure the beef

  1. Sprinkle the meat with coarse sea salt, saltpetre, and brown sugar.

  2. Leave the meat for three days.

  3. Heat ½ cup of salt in a frying pan and rub it into the beef.

  4. Let it sit in salt for ten days, washing it with pickle daily and turning it.

  5. Add a few bay leaves to the pickle.

  6. Sprinkle the beef with fine spice three to four days before boiling.

Cook and press

  1. Beat the beef with a heavy cleaver to tenderize it and maintain its shape.

  2. Boil the beef until tender.

  3. Once done, wring the ends of the cloth and tie them tightly.

  4. Place the beef in a press with a heavy weight on top.

  5. If no press is available, place it on a dish and prop it up with a weight.

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 + sugartop 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

Flat ribs of beef
The main meat, which becomes tender and holds its shape through curing and boiling.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat during the long cure.
Saltpetre
Helps preserve the meat and gives it a characteristic pink colour during curing.
Coarse brown sugar
Balances the salt with sweetness and helps the cure taste rounded.
Bay leaves
Add a subtle aromatic flavour to the pickle that the beef absorbs.

The step that matters

Turning and washing the beef in pickle daily. Salt cures unevenly if the brine does not reach every surface. Daily washing and turning keeps the cure even and prevents salty or spoiled patches over the ten days.

“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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