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Beef Flank Steak Roast

A roast of flank steak rolled with a bread and butter dressing, seasoned with salt, pepper, and sage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Beef Flank Steak Roast

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Make a dressing by mixing the bread, butter, salt, pepper, and sage.

Assemble and roast

  1. Spread the dressing on the flank steak and roll it up tightly.

  2. Tie the rolled steak with string.

  3. Roast in the oven 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 + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Bread + sagetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  5. Butter + sagetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,312 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Flank steak
Forms the main body of the roll and becomes tender and juicy as it roasts.
Bread
Soaks up butter and seasoning to form a moist, flavourful stuffing inside the roll.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavour and helps keep the bread moist during roasting.
Dried sage
Contributes an earthy, aromatic flavour to the dressing.

The step that matters

Roll and tie the steak tightly. If the roll is loose, the dressing can fall out and the steak will cook unevenly. A firm, even roll with snug string holds the filling in and gives slices a neat spiral.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Sagethe original
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

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