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To Collar Beef

A preserved beef dish made by pickling, stuffing, rolling, and boiling a flank of beef with bacon, corned pork, herbs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

To Collar Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Cure the beef

  1. Make a pickle with brown sugar, common salt, and saltpetre.

  2. Leave a flank of beef in the pickle for 10 days, turning it daily.

Prepare and stuff

  1. Remove the bone and gristle, leaving the outer skin on.

  2. Beat the inside of the beef with a rolling pin until tender.

  3. Score the flesh in rows, being careful not to cut the outer skin.

  4. Fill the scores with alternating slices of bacon, corned pork, and chopped herbs seasoned with spices.

  5. Roll the flank tightly and bind it with coarse broad tape.

Cook and finish

  1. Wrap the rolled flank in a cloth and boil gently for 4 to 5 hours, depending on the size.

  2. Once cold, remove from the cloth, unbind the tape, and fasten with small skewers.

  3. Optionally glaze or rub with egg yolk and brown with a salamander.

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. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  2. Sugar + porktop 37% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,579 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Sugar + beeftop 37% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef flank
Forms the main body of the roll and becomes tender and sliceable after curing and boiling.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the saltiness of the cure.
Common salt
Draws moisture out and seasons the meat, helping preserve it during curing.
Saltpetre
Helps the cure keep the meat's pink color and adds preservative action during the long pickle.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor to the filling, keeping the interior moist as it cooks.
Corned pork
Adds salty, cured flavor and fat to the filling, contributing to a well-seasoned interior.

The step that matters

Scoring the flesh without cutting the outer skin. The outer skin holds the rolled flank together during boiling. A cut through it lets the filling leak and the roll lose its shape.

“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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