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To Collar Beef

Curing flank beef with salt, saltpetre, herbs, and 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

Prepare

  1. Lay the beef in a dish with salt and saltpetre, turning and rubbing it every day for a week.

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

Season and roll

  1. Cover the meat thickly with the chopped herbs, 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 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
The main cut; long gentle cooking breaks down its connective tissue for a tender, moist texture.
Saltpetre
Curing agent that helps preserve the meat during the week-long cure and gives it a pink colour.
Allspice
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour to the seasoned outside of the meat.
Sage
Contributes a savoury, aromatic herbal flavour to the seasoning crust.

The step that matters

Boil gently for 7 to 8 hours. A gentle simmer lets the tough connective tissue soften slowly, giving a tender, sliceable texture. A hard, rapid boil tightens the muscle fibres and can make the meat dry and stringy, or cause it to break 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.

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