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Rolled Boiled Beef

Rolled Boiled Beef is a beef flank roll stuffed with cracker crumbs, salt pork, herbs, and egg, boiled until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Rolled Boiled Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Lay the beef on a dish.

  2. Combine cracker crumbs, salt pork, sea salt, thyme, marjoram, sage, pepper, onion juice, and egg in a bowl.

  3. Moisten the mixture with stock until soft enough to spread.

  4. Spread the force-meat mixture over the beef.

Roll and cook

  1. Roll the beef like a pudding.

  2. Tie it with kitchen twine.

  3. Wrap it in cheesecloth.

  4. Place in boiling water.

  5. Cook slowly for 4 hours.

Cool, press and serve

  1. Let it cool in the water until lukewarm.

  2. Place a heavy weight on top until the next day.

  3. Remove the cloth.

  4. Cut the strings.

  5. Serve cold with horseradish sauce.

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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Marjoram + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together507 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,485 recipes

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

  4. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef flank
Forms the main body of the roll, which becomes tender with slow simmering.
Egg
Binds the force-meat mixture so it holds together when sliced.
Cracker crumbs
Absorb stock and give the filling body so it can be spread.
Salt pork
Adds fat and moisture to the lean filling.

The step that matters

Cooking slowly in boiling water. Once the water returns to a boil, keeping it at a gentle simmer cooks the beef through without toughening the muscle fibres. A hard boil can make the meat tough and break the roll apart.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pork, thyme, marjoram, sage, pepper, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, thyme, marjoram, sage, pepper, egg. 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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