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To Collar Beef

A slow‑cooked beef seasoned with salt, saltpetre, herbs, and spices, boiled for 7–8 hours.

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. Rub the beef with salt and saltpetre, turning it daily for a week in a cool place.

Prepare and roll

  1. Remove all bones, gristle, and skin from the beef.

  2. Cover the inside of the beef with the chopped herbs and spices.

  3. Roll the beef tightly and bind it with string.

Cook and shape

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

  2. Place a weight on the beef 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
Forms the main body of the dish, and its connective tissue softens into tender meat during long, gentle cooking.
Saltpetre
Helps cure the meat, preserving it and giving it a pink colour during the week of curing.
Sage
Adds a savoury, earthy aroma that pairs with the rich beef.
Allspice
Contributes warm, aromatic spice notes that flavour the meat from the inside of the roll.
Parsley
Adds a fresh, green aroma that lightens the rich flavour of the beef.

The step that matters

Boil the beef gently. A hard, rapid boil toughens the meat's proteins and can break up the roll. Gentle, steady heat over several hours slowly softens the connective tissue, leaving the beef tender and holding its shape.

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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