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Pork, to Collar

A method of cooking pork breast by seasoning, wrapping in cloth, boiling, and preserving in brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,485 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Pork, to Collar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Bone the breast of pork.

  2. Season the pork with savoury spice, parsley, sage, and thyme.

Roll and cook

  1. Roll the seasoned pork in a hard collar of cloth and tie it tightly.

  2. Boil the wrapped pork until cooked through.

Store

  1. Once cooled, keep the pork in a brine or souse.

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. Sage + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,485 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,445 recipes

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

  4. Pork + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,527 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Pork + thymetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork breast
Provides the main meat, which is rolled and cooked whole in the collar.
Parsley
Adds fresh herbal aroma to the seasoned meat.
Sage
Adds earthy, savoury aroma that complements the pork.
Thyme
Adds aromatic herbal flavour to the seasoned meat.

The step that matters

Tying the roll tightly. A firmly tied roll holds its shape and keeps the seasoning in contact with the meat while it cooks. Loose wrapping can let the roll unravel or water in during boiling, so the pork cooks unevenly and loses its neat, compact form.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, sage, thyme):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Rosemaryfits better
  3. Oreganofits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, sage, 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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