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Beef Roll

A rolled beef dish with sausage, breadcrumbs, onion, Worcestershire sauce, and ketchup, simmered in boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beef Roll

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rolls

  1. Cut the beef into slices ½ inch thick.

  2. Mix the sausage meat with the stale bread crumbs.

  3. Spread the mixture on the beef slices, roll them up, and tie firmly.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, and dredge thickly with flour.

Cook

  1. Place in an earthen dish with onion, Worcestershire sauce, and tomato ketchup.

  2. Cover with boiling water and cook for 5 hours.

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 + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Beef + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

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

  4. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Bread + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean beef
Forms the rolled outer meat that becomes tender during long, moist cooking.
Sausage meat
Adds fat and savoury flavour that melts into the filling as it cooks.
Stale bread crumbs
Absorb the meat juices and fat, helping bind the filling and keep it moist.
Flour
Dredged on the outside, it helps the surface brown and thicken the cooking liquid.
Tomato ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity that deepen the savoury, tangy flavour of the braising liquid.

The step that matters

Tie the rolls firmly before cooking. Loose rolls can open during the long simmer, letting the filling escape into the liquid. Firm rolling and tying keep the filling enclosed while the beef softens.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, meat, bread, pepper, flour, sauce, tomato. 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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