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Rolled Beef Steak

A rolled beef steak stuffed with forcemeat, browned and simmered in stock with lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Rolled Beef Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the roll

  1. Beat the steak with a rolling pin to an even thickness.

  2. Spread a layer of forcemeat over the steak and season with salt, cayenne pepper, and grated nutmeg.

  3. Roll up the steak and sew it with one or two stitches.

Brown and braise

  1. Heat the butter in a stewpan until smoking hot.

  2. Fry the roll until browned on all sides; do not pierce it with a fork.

  3. Remove the roll from the pan.

  4. Fry the flour until brown.

  5. Add the stock and stir until it boils.

  6. Once just off the boil, add the beef.

  7. Add the lemon juice.

  8. Simmer gently for 1 to 2 hours until tender.

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

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Steak
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender through long gentle simmering.
Flour
Browned in the butter to form a roux that thickens the sauce.
Butter
Carries heat for browning the roll and adds richness to the dish.
Stock
Forms the liquid in which the beef simmers, becoming the base of the sauce.
Forcemeat
Spread inside the roll, adding moisture and savoury flavour as the beef cooks.

The step that matters

Browning the roll without piercing it. Searing the outside in hot fat builds colour and flavour, while piercing lets juices escape, leaving the meat drier. Keeping the roll whole holds in moisture during the long simmer.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Raisinfits less well
  4. Figfits less well

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