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To Collar Beef

Beef cured with salt, saltpetre, herbs, and boiled.

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 salt and saltpetre, turning it daily for a week in a cool place.

  2. Remove all bones and gristle, and skin the inside part of the beef.

Season and roll

  1. Mix the chopped herbs, pepper, salt, and mace, then cover the beef thickly with this seasoning.

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

Boil and press

  1. Boil gently for 6 to 7 hours.

  2. While hot, place it under a weight without untying it; it will take an oval shape when 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. 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

Beef
Forms the main body of the dish, and its fat and connective tissue soften during long gentle cooking.
Saltpetre
Helps keep the meat pink and cured-looking during the week of curing.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat during the curing week.
Sage
Adds a savoury, aromatic herbal flavour to the seasoning.
Parsley
Adds fresh, green herbal aroma to the seasoning.

The step that matters

Boil gently for 6 to 7 hours. A gentle simmer cooks the rolled beef evenly and slowly breaks down connective tissue into tender meat. A hard, rapid boil can toughen the outside and break the roll apart.

Swap the mace

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. Macethe 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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