Skip to main content
Main

To Collar Beef

A method of preserving beef by salting, herb seasoning, and slow boiling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Prepare

  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.

Season and roll

  1. Cover the beef thickly with chopped parsley, sage, thyme, marjoram, pennyroyal, pepper, salt, and allspice.

  2. Roll the meat tightly and bind it.

Cook and shape

  1. Boil gently for 7 to 8 hours, wrapping it in a cloth before binding.

  2. Place the beef under a weight while hot to shape it 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, and its muscle proteins set into firm, sliceable meat when cooked.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat deeply during the curing period.
Saltpetre
Converts to nitrite during curing, giving the meat its pink colour and cured flavour.
Sage
Adds an earthy, aromatic herbal flavour that carries through the cooked meat.
Allspice
Contributes warm, aromatic spice notes that complement the seasoned beef.

The step that matters

Boil gently for 7 to 8 hours. A gentle simmer cooks the connective tissue slowly and keeps the meat tender. A hard boil toughens the muscle fibres and can break the roll apart.

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.

More salted beef recipes

Dutch 9Collar 5or Pork 4Ribs 4Roast 4English 3 See all 109 →

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes