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To Collar Beef

A beef cured by salting, herb seasoning, and slow boiling.

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 in a cool place.

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

Season and shape

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

  2. Wrap a cloth around the meat, then roll the meat tightly and bind it.

  3. Place it under a weight while hot to shape it oval.

Cook

  1. Boil gently for 7 to 8 hours.

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 body of the dish; its lean muscle sets firm and sliceable after curing and cooking.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat during the cure, firming its texture.
Saltpetre
Helps the cure keep its pink colour and adds a cured flavour to the meat.
Parsley
Adds fresh, green aroma that lightens the rich flavour of the beef.
Sage
Contributes a warm, resinous aroma that suits the richness of the beef.

The step that matters

Boiling gently for 7 to 8 hours. Simmering below a hard boil keeps the meat tender and prevents the outside from toughening or breaking apart. A rolling boil forces proteins to tighten and squeezes out juices, leaving the meat dry and stringy.

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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