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Beef Roll

A steamed and baked roll of round steak coated with a breadcrumb mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Beef Roll

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Make a dressing by mixing bread crumbs with salt, pepper, sage, and enough water to make it sticky.

  2. Spread the dressing on the round steak and roll it up tightly.

  3. Tie the roll securely with cloth.

Cook

  1. Steam the roll in a covered pot for 2 hours.

  2. Bake the roll uncovered 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. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Bread + sagetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + sagetop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,100 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Round steak
Forms the outer meat that is rolled around the dressing and becomes tender during slow cooking.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and form the bulk of the sticky dressing filling inside the roll.
Egg
Not used in any step of the method, so its role is not stated.

The step that matters

Rolling and tying the roll tightly. A loose roll can let the dressing spill out during steaming and baking, and an insufficiently secured roll may unroll while cooking. Tight rolling keeps the filling compact and the shape intact.

Swap the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, egg, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, egg, 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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