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Rolled Beef Steaks

Rolled beef steaks stuffed with a forcemeat of fowl, veal, ham, kidney, sweetbread, truffles, morels, eschalot, parsley, thyme, and lemon peel, stewed in gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 22 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 ↓

Rolled Beef Steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Make the forcemeat

  1. Prepare a forcemeat by finely chopping the fowl, veal, ham, kidney, sweetbread, truffles, morels, eschalot, parsley, thyme, and lemon peel.

  2. Stir in the egg yolks and cream, and cook the mixture over low heat for 10 minutes.

Roll and fry

  1. Spread the forcemeat on tender beef steaks.

  2. Roll the steaks up.

  3. Secure the rolls with skewers.

  4. Fry the rolled steaks in oil until golden brown.

  5. Remove the steaks from the oil.

Stew and serve

  1. Stew them in beef gravy, ketchup, Port wine, and mushrooms for 15 minutes.

  2. Cut the steaks in half.

  3. Serve with the cut side up.

  4. Pour the gravy around them.

  5. Garnish with lemon or pickled mushrooms.

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

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

  3. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  5. Thyme + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Bind the forcemeat and help it set when cooked over low heat.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the forcemeat, keeping it soft and smooth.
Beef steaks
Form the outer wrapping that holds the forcemeat and browns when fried.
Beef gravy
Provides the savoury liquid in which the rolls stew, adding moisture and flavour.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth to the stewing liquid.
Breast of a fowl
Supplies lean finely chopped meat that gives the forcemeat body.

The step that matters

Frying the rolled steaks until golden brown. The skewered rolls must be browned evenly on the outside so the surface develops flavour through the Maillard reaction, while the forcemeat inside cooks through before the rolls are stewed.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, truffle, parsley, thyme, lemon, egg):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, truffle, parsley, thyme, lemon, egg. 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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