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Stuffed Beefsteak

A rolled flank or round steak filled with plain stuffing, boiled and baked in butter and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Stuffed Beefsteak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the steak

  1. Pound the steak.

  2. Sprinkle the steak with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  3. Spread the plain stuffing on the meat.

  4. Roll the meat up and tie it securely.

Cook and brown

  1. Place the rolled steak in a pot with boiling water and butter.

  2. Boil slowly for 1 hour.

  3. Transfer the rolled steak to a baking pan with the boiling water.

  4. Bake until browned, basting frequently.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Dredge a little flour into the gravy.

  2. Boil the gravy.

  3. Pour the gravy over the meat.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

Flank or round steak
Forms the main body of the dish, and its muscle fibers become tender with slow moist cooking.
Plain stuffing
Adds bulk and savory flavor inside the rolled steak, soaking up juices as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the surface brown and flavor the cooking liquid.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth gravy as it boils.

The step that matters

Boil slowly for 1 hour. Gentle simmering keeps the tough muscle fibers of flank or round steak from tightening and drying out, letting connective tissue soften into tenderness. A hard boil toughens and dries the meat.

“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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