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Stuffed Beefsteak

A beefsteak filled with stale bread and fat pork or butter, seasoned with salt, pepper, and sage, baked and served with a flour-thickened dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Stuffed Beefsteak

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Cut a thick slice from the round of beef, shaped like an oblong square.

  2. Rub the slice with salt and pepper to taste.

  3. Make a filling with stale bread and fat salt pork or butter, seasoned with salt, pepper, and sage.

  4. Roll the filling up in the beef slice and sew the edges together.

Bake and make the dressing

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven, basting often.

  2. Make a dressing with the drippings, thickened with flour and seasoned.

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. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  5. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef round slice
Forms the outer wrapper that holds the filling and cooks into the tender main portion.
Stale bread
Absorbs fat and juices, giving the filling a moist, soft body.
Fat salt pork or butter
Adds richness and moisture to the filling and carries seasoning through it.
Flour
Thickens the drippings into a smooth, lightly bodied dressing.

The step that matters

Basting often during baking. Regular basting spoons hot fat over the surface, helping it brown and keeping the lean beef from drying out during the long oven cook.

Swap the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, bread, pork, flour):

  1. Marjoramfits about as well
  2. Sagethe original
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Parsleyfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, bread, pork, flour. 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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