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Stuffed Beef Steak on Toast

A dish of rolled round steak stuffed with bacon, onion, parsley, pepper, and salt, cooked with stock and served on toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stuffed Beef Steak on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rolls

  1. Cut the round steak into pieces about the size of a hand.

  2. Place a small piece of bacon, chopped onion, parsley, pepper, and coarse sea salt on each piece.

  3. Roll up the steak pieces and secure with toothpicks.

Cook

  1. Fry a piece of salt pork in a pan.

  2. Add the stuffed steaks to the same pan and cook gently for 30 minutes.

  3. When well done, sprinkle a little flour over the steaks and add 1 cup of stock or meat gravy.

Serve

  1. Serve the steaks on slices of toast.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Onion + porktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Pork + meattop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,208 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Round steak
Forms the wrapper that holds the filling and becomes tender during slow cooking.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor that seasons the meat from inside as it cooks.
Flour (in the method)
Thickens the pan juices into a smoother sauce when stirred into the drippings.
Stock or meat gravy
Adds moisture and savory flavor to the pan, forming the sauce with the drippings.

The step that matters

Cooking gently for 30 minutes. Low, gentle heat lets the tough round steak soften without drying out or toughening. Cooking too hard can make the meat tough and dry, so keep the heat low and steady.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, pepper, pork, meat):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, pepper, pork, meat. 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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