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To Collar Beef

A beef cured with salt, saltpetre, herbs, and spices, then boiled and shaped into an oval.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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. Lay the beef in a dish with salt and saltpetre, turning and rubbing it every day for a week.

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

Season and shape

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

  2. Roll the meat tightly and bind it.

Cook and press

  1. Boil gently for seven to eight hours, wrapping it in a cloth before binding.

  2. Place the beef under a weight while hot to shape it into an oval.

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, becoming firm and sliceable as the meat cooks.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat deep into the cut during curing.
Saltpetre
Helps the cured meat keep its pink colour and a firm texture.
Sage
Adds a savoury, aromatic herbal flavour to the outside of the roll.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic spice notes that complement the herbs and beef.

The step that matters

Boil gently for seven to eight hours. A gentle simmer cooks the meat slowly so collagen softens without the muscle fibres toughening or the outside breaking apart. A hard boil makes the meat tough and dry.

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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