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Rolls, Meat

Meat rolls are small, puff pastry-wrapped rolls filled with seasoned meat and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Rolls, Meat

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the meat

  1. Mince the underdone meat.

  2. Pound the minced meat smoothly with fresh butter, pepper, and salt.

Make the forcemeat

  1. Mix lemon rind, bread crumbs, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and sweet herbs to make forcemeat.

  2. Incorporate sweet butter and egg yolk into the forcemeat mixture until well combined.

  3. Form the forcemeat into small rolls about 3 inches long and 0.5 inches thick.

  4. Moisten the rolls with water.

  5. Cover the moistened rolls with pounded meat.

Wrap and bake

  1. Wrap the rolls in puff pastry, securing the ends.

  2. Bake the wrapped rolls in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 20 minutes.

  3. Serve the rolls piled on a neatly-folded napkin.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Underdone meat
Forms the savoury filling base and, pounded smooth, the outer coating of each roll.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the forcemeat so it holds its shape when formed into rolls.
Egg yolk
Binds the forcemeat and adds richness to hold the rolls together.
Fresh butter
Adds fat and richness, keeping the forcemeat moist and tender.
Puff pastry
Wraps the rolls and bakes into flaky, golden layers that brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Securing the pastry ends when wrapping the rolls. If the ends are not sealed well, the pastry can open during baking and let the filling leak out, leaving the rolls dry and uneven.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Avocadofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, butter, pepper, bread, nutmeg, egg. 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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