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Roast Beef Roll

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Roast Beef Roll

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Trim the round steak into a rectangular form.

  2. Chop the trimmings of beef, bread, onion, salt pork, and spices to form a force-meat.

  3. Spread the force-meat over the steak, roll it up, and secure with skewers or string.

  4. Baste frequently with a mixture of butter and suet, or butter mixed with water.

  5. Place the roast on a grate in a dripping pan.

  6. For the sauce, brown 1 tablespoon of butter in a pan.

  7. Add ½ pint of rich soup stock, 1 small chopped onion, and 1 chopped carrot; stew for 15 minutes.

  8. Add the chopped pickled cucumber, 1 tablespoon of vinegar, and a dash of red pepper to the sauce.

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

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

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Carrot + cucumbertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,215 recipes

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

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

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, bread, onion, pork, butter, sauce, carrot):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, onion, pork, butter, sauce, carrot. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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