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On Baking Meat

A roast of large sirloin stuffed with mashed potato, grated ham, suet, and onion, seasoned and roasted with caul or bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

On Baking Meat

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Cut the lean inside of a large sirloin into pieces.

  2. Stuff the pieces with mashed potato, grated ham, suet, and onion.

  3. Season the mixture with coarse sea salt, pepper, and allspice.

  4. Skewer and tie the stuffed sirloin with tape.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until cooked through.

  2. Cover with veal or lamb caul or slices of fat bacon while roasting.

  3. Baste well during cooking.

  4. Serve with venison sauce and gravy.

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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Onion + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Large sirloin
Forms the main body of the roast and carries the stuffing while it cooks.
Mashed potato
Adds moisture and body to the stuffing, keeping the filling soft as it cooks.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the filling moist and rich during roasting.
Veal or lamb caul
Wraps the roast to hold in moisture and protect the surface while it cooks.
Fat bacon
Covers the roast to baste it with fat and add savory flavour as it roasts.

The step that matters

Roast until cooked through. A stuffed roast is thick and the filling sits in the centre, so the middle can stay underdone while the outside browns. Checking that the centre is fully cooked protects against both undercooking and drying out the meat.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, ham, onion, pepper, veal):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, ham, onion, pepper, veal. 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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