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Collared Beef

A salted and boiled flank beef, cured with salt, sugar, allspice, pepper, and herbs, then rolled, tied, and simmered.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Collared Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Cure the beef

  1. Rub the flank beef with coarse sea salt and saltpeter.

  2. Let it drain overnight.

  3. Rub the flank beef in a mixture of coarse sea salt, sugar, ground allspice, and black pepper.

  4. Keep it in a salting tub for a week.

  5. Turn it often.

  6. Baste it with the brine.

  7. In cold weather, keep it in the mixture for 10 to 12 days.

  8. Remove the beef.

Prepare and roll

  1. Bone it.

  2. Cut off gristle and tough skin.

  3. Dry it with a cloth.

  4. Sprinkle the inside with minced parsley leaves, minced lemon-thyme leaves, minced winter savoury leaves, powdered allspice, and black pepper.

  5. Roll it tightly.

  6. Bind it with a broad linen fillet and tape.

  7. Place it under a heavy weight for 1 hour.

  8. Re-tie it securely.

Simmer and set

  1. Simmer the meat slowly in an earthenware pan with skewers at the bottom for 5 hours in a little water, covered tightly.

  2. Place it under weight again until cold and set, which will take until the next day.

  3. Remove the binding.

  4. Serve.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Allspice + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flank beef
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender through long slow cooking.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat during the curing stage.
Saltpetre
Helps preserve the meat and keeps its colour during curing.
Sugar
Balances the salt and adds mild sweetness to the cure.
Parsley leaves
Adds fresh herbal aroma to the filling inside the rolled beef.

The step that matters

Simmering the rolled beef. Simmering gently with the pan covered keeps the meat moist and tender. Too much heat can toughen the muscle fibres and dry the meat out.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Rosemaryfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, sugar, pepper, parsley, lemon, thyme. 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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