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Beef Brownies

Beef Brownies are rolled beef strips coated in a bread and egg dressing, fried, simmered, and served with lettuce and tomato.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and pepper 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 ↓

Beef Brownies

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rolls

  1. Pound the round steak flat and cut it into strips 2 inches thick and 6 inches long.

  2. Make a dressing by mixing stale bread, egg, onion, butter, sage, salt, and pepper.

  3. Spread the dressing on the meat strips, roll them up, and secure with toothpicks.

Brown and simmer

  1. Heat butter and lard in a kettle.

  2. Add the beef brownies and brown them nicely.

  3. Add enough water to cover the brownies and simmer for 1.5 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve garnished with lettuce leaves and slices of tomatoes.

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

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

  4. Onion + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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

Round steak
Forms the outer wrapper, becoming tender during the long simmer.
Stale bread
Absorbs moisture and gives the dressing body so it stays in place.
Egg
Binds the dressing together so it holds its shape inside the roll.
Onion
Adds aromatic flavor to the dressing as it cooks inside the meat.
Butter and lard
Fat for frying that promotes browning on the outside of the rolls.

The step that matters

Brown and simmer. Browning the rolls well in hot fat builds flavor on the surface, and the long simmer in water then tenderizes the meat. Cooking too hot can scorch the fat before the rolls are evenly coloured.

Swap the onion

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

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

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