Skip to main content
Main

Stufked Beef Steak

A beef steak stuffed with a breadcrumb and onion mixture, simmered slowly in water and served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Stufked Beef Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the bone from the beef steak and sew up the open place.

  2. Make a dressing by mixing bread crumbs with coarse sea salt, black pepper, and chopped onions.

  3. Place the dressing in the middle of the steak, roll it up, and sew it together.

Cook

  1. Put the rolled steak in a kettle on the stovetop with just enough water to prevent burning, adding more water as it boils away.

  2. Cook slowly for three hours, turning occasionally to brown on all sides.

Make gravy and serve

  1. Make gravy, thicken it slightly, and pour part of it over the meat.

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

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef steak
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender through slow, moist cooking.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices and give the stuffing a soft, moist texture.
Onions
Add aromatic flavor to the dressing as they soften during cooking.

The step that matters

Keeping the water topped up. Too little water lets the bottom scorch before the steak browns and the gravy forms, while steady slow cooking keeps connective tissue breaking down gently for tenderness.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, bread. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes