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Rolled Beef

Rolled Beef is a seasoned beef roll braised with wine, stock, and aromatics, served with a savory gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Rolled Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Remove the bones from the beef ribs or use another cut that can be rolled.

  2. In a bowl, mix the garlic, onion, fat salt pork, salt, pepper, and ground cloves.

  3. Spread the mixture over the beef, roll it up, and secure with string and skewers.

Braise

  1. Heat the butter in a stew pan, then add the beef roll and brown it on all sides.

  2. Add the wine or vinegar, water or stock, bay leaf, pepper, and whole cloves.

  3. Cover and cook the beef slowly for 2 hours.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Remove the beef from the pan and skim off the fat from the gravy.

  2. Add the toasted bread to the gravy and let it sit for 5 minutes.

  3. Strain the gravy through a coarse sieve and serve with the beef, garnished with lemon slices.

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. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  5. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 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

Beef ribs
Forms the main body of the dish; rolling and slow cooking make it tender.
Fat salt pork
Adds fat that melts during slow cooking, keeping the filling moist and flavourful.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma as it softens in the filling and gravy.
Garlic clove
Adds pungent aroma that mellows during slow cooking.
Wine or vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the braising liquid and gravy.
Toasted bread
Thickens the gravy as it soaks up liquid and breaks down.

The step that matters

Brown the beef roll on all sides. Browning creates colour and deep savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale searing leaves the gravy flat and the surface less appealing.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, garlic, onion, pork, pepper, butter, wine):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, garlic, onion, pork, pepper, butter, wine. 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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