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Stuffed Beef Steak

A beef steak stuffed with bread crumbs, spices, and pork, then stewed in stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Stuffed Beef Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the steak

  1. Preheat a kettle or deep stew-pan and fry the pork until crisp.

  2. Remove the pork and roll the bread crumbs, salt, pepper, and spices into the steak.

  3. Secure the ends with twine.

Stew

  1. Brown the steak on all sides in the pan.

  2. Add the stock or water, sprinkle with salt, cover, and stew slowly for 1.5 hours.

  3. Add more water if it becomes too dry.

  4. Optionally, add half of a small chopped onion.

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 + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Bread + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Clove + porktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,515 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Pepper + porktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  5. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Rump steak
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender through long, slow stewing.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices and add body to the stuffing, keeping the filling moist.
Pork
Adds fat and savory flavor to the pan that carries into the beef during browning and stewing.
Stock or water
Provides liquid for slow stewing, keeping the meat moist and building the sauce.

The step that matters

Brown the steak on all sides. Searing creates browned surface flavor through the Maillard reaction. Browning all sides before adding liquid builds color and savory depth in the finished sauce.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, pepper, pork. 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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