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The Breakfast Book

A pastry roll filled with seasoned steak and mushrooms or truffles, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

The Breakfast Book

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the steak

  1. Season the steak with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  2. Dip the steak in olive oil or liquid butter.

  3. Broil the steak for 5 minutes over a clear fire, turning once.

Wrap and bake

  1. Roll out the pastry dough larger than the steak.

  2. Place the steak on the pastry.

  3. Add mushrooms or truffles.

  4. Roll the pastry around the steak, sealing the edges with egg white.

  5. Glaze the roll with egg white.

  6. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.

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 + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Olive + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,571 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + olivetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 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

Steak
Forms the central filling and provides the savoury meat flavour of the roll.
Pastry dough
Encloses the filling and bakes into a crisp, golden outer shell.
Egg white
Seals the pastry edges and glazes the surface for a shiny, browned finish.
Chopped mushrooms or sliced truffles
Adds earthy aroma and moisture to the filling.

The step that matters

Broil the steak before wrapping. Searing the outside over high heat browns the surface and builds flavour, while the steak is only partly cooked so it finishes gently inside the pastry without overcooking.

“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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