Skip to main content
Main

Baked Steak

A round steak rolled with a breadcrumb mixture, baked with salt pork, and basted in hot water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Baked Steak

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the roll

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the cracker or bread crumbs, egg, butter, salt, pepper, sage, and milk or water.

  3. Spread the mixture thickly over the round steak.

  4. Roll the steak up tightly and tie it securely.

  5. Season the outside of the roll with additional salt and pepper.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the roll in a dripping pan and top it with the salt pork.

  2. Add a little hot water to the pan and baste frequently.

  3. Turn the steak when the top side is tender.

  4. Once cooked, let it cool and slice from the ends for serving.

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 + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Sage + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,527 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Round steak
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender through slow oven cooking.
Cracker or bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and bind the stuffing so it holds inside the roll.
Egg
Binds the stuffing together and helps it set as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the stuffing and helps it brown.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that bastes the steak as it renders.

The step that matters

Turn the steak when the top side is tender. Turning too early can tear the rolled meat and loosen the stuffing. Waiting until the top is tender lets the roll hold its shape while the bottom browns and the connective tissue softens.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Sagethe original
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, egg, butter, pepper, milk, pork. 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 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes