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Collared Beef

Collared Beef is a salted and cured flank prepared by brining, seasoning, and slow cooking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Collared Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Cure the beef

  1. Rub the flank with coarse sea salt and saltpetre.

  2. Let it drain overnight.

  3. Rub the flank in a mixture of coarse sea salt, sugar, ground allspice, and pepper.

  4. Keep the flank in a salting tub for a week, turning it often and basting with the brine.

  5. In cold weather, keep the flank in the mixture for 10 to 12 days.

Prepare and roll

  1. Remove the flank, bone it, and cut off gristle and tough skin.

  2. Dry the flank with a cloth and sprinkle minced parsley, lemon‑thyme, winter savoury, powdered allspice, and pepper inside.

  3. Roll the flank tightly and bind it with linen fillet and tape.

  4. Keep the bound flank under a heavy weight for 1 hour.

Simmer and cool

  1. Remove the fillets, re‑tie the flank tightly, and simmer it in an earthenware pan with skewers at the bottom for 5 hours in a little water, covered tightly.

  2. After cooking, place the flank under weight again until completely cool, then remove the binding.

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Allspice + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Flank
Forms the main body of the collar, and its connective tissue softens into tenderness during long cooking.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat during curing, helping it hold together.
Saltpetre
Gives the cured meat its characteristic pink colour and helps preserve it.
Sugar
Balances the salt and softens the flavour of the cure.
Parsley
Adds fresh herbal aroma to the filling inside the roll.

The step that matters

Simmering the rolled flank. The meat must stay at a gentle simmer under a tight cover with little water. Boiling hard can toughen the muscle fibres and break the roll apart, while long slow heat is what softens the connective tissue.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, pepper, parsley, lemon, thyme):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Fennelfits better
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, pepper, parsley, lemon, 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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