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Beef Boll

Beef Boll is 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) · 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 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 and pepper, then dredge thickly 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

Lean beef
Forms the main body of the rolls and becomes tender during long, slow cooking.
Sausage meat
Adds fat and savory flavor that seasons the beef from within as it cooks.
Stale bread crumbs
Absorb the sausage fat and juices, binding the filling and keeping it moist.
Flour
Coats the outside of the rolls, thickening the cooking liquid and aiding browning.
Tomato ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity to the cooking liquid, deepening its flavor.

The step that matters

Cover with boiling water and cook for 5 hours. Long, gentle simmering breaks down the connective tissue in lean beef, making it tender. Water that is too hot or a boil that is too vigorous can toughen the meat and dry out the rolls.

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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