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Rolled Beefsteaks

Rolled beefsteaks stuffed with breadcrumbs, pork, and onion, baked and served with a browned flour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Rolled Beefsteaks

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

  1. Remove the bones from the steaks and place them in a soup pot.

  2. Flatten the meat with a hatchet.

  3. Cover the flattened meat with a mixture of bread crumbs, minced pork, and half an onion.

  4. Moisten the mixture slightly with water and season to taste.

  5. Roll each steak tightly around the stuffing.

  6. Bind the rolled steak with twine into a compact bundle.

Bake

  1. Place the bundles in a dripping pan.

  2. Pour boiling water over the bundles.

  3. Cover the pan with an inverted pan.

  4. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 45 minutes.

  5. Remove the cover and baste the meat with butter.

Brown and serve

  1. Dredge the meat with flour to brown it.

  2. Transfer the browned meat to a hot dish.

  3. Thicken the gravy with a little browned flour.

  4. Boil the gravy.

  5. Serve the gravy in a gravy boat.

  6. Clip the strings from the rolled beef in several places to maintain its shape.

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

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

  2. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Bread + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Sirloin steaks
Main meat that wraps the stuffing and becomes tender and browned when baked.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture from the stuffing and help hold it together inside the roll.
Fat salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor to the stuffing, keeping it moist as it cooks.
Onion
Adds aroma and mild sweetness to the stuffing as it cooks.
Flour
Dredged on the surface to brown the meat and later thicken the gravy.

The step that matters

Browning after the cover is removed. Flour and butter brown only in dry, direct heat, so the cover must come off before basting. Leaving it on steams the meat and the surface stays pale.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, pork, pepper, butter, flour. 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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