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Beef Boll

A rolled beef dish with sausage, bread crumbs, onion, Worcestershire sauce, and ketchup, boiled for five hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Beef Boll

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the roll

  1. Cut the beef into slices ½ inch thick.

  2. Mix the sausage meat with the stale bread crumbs and spread this mixture on the beef.

  3. Roll up the beef slices tightly and tie them securely.

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

Cook

  1. Place in an earthen dish with the 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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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 roll and becomes tender during long, moist cooking.
Sausage meat
Adds fat and savory flavor that bastes the beef as it cooks.
Stale bread crumbs
Absorb juices and fat from the sausage, helping bind the filling and keep it moist.
Tomato ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity that deepen the savory sauce.
Worcestershire sauce
Contributes salty, tangy depth to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Cover with boiling water and cook for 5 hours. Long, gentle simmering in liquid breaks down the tough connective tissue in shoulder or shin beef. Water that is too cool or a heat that is too fierce can leave the meat tough or dry.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, meat, bread, sauce, tomato, ketchup, 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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