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Beef Roll

A rolled steak stuffed with bread, herbs, and pork, simmered in water with onion and clove.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 507 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Beef Roll

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the roll

  1. Soak the bread crusts in cold water, then drain.

  2. Mix the soaked bread with sage, marjoram, black pepper, salt, melted butter, and grated onion.

  3. Spread the dressing evenly over the steak and roll it up tightly, securing with strips of cotton cloth.

Brown and simmer

  1. In a kettle, fry the salt pork until the fat renders, then add the beef roll and brown it slightly.

  2. Remove the pork, add hot water to cover the meat, and include a small piece of onion and powdered clove.

  3. Boil slowly for 2.5 hours, then remove the strings and 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. Sage + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together507 recipes

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

  2. Marjoram + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Onion + porktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Round steak
Forms the wrapped outer layer that becomes tender during slow cooking.
Bread crusts
Soak up moisture and form the bulk of the stuffing, keeping it soft and moist.
Salt pork
Renders fat into the kettle to brown the roll and add savoury richness.
Butter
Adds fat to the dressing, carrying flavour and keeping the stuffing moist.

The step that matters

Rolling the steak tightly. A loosely rolled roll can open or let dressing escape during long simmering. Tight rolling and secure tying keep the filling inside while the meat softens.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sage, marjoram, pepper, butter, pork, meat. 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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