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Excellent Meat Rolls

Meat rolls made from half-roasted meat and forcemeat, wrapped in puff pastry and baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and veal are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,381 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Excellent Meat Rolls

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 the filling

  1. Pound the half-roasted meat as for potting.

  2. Mix the pounded meat with the same proportion of butter and seasonings.

  3. Make forcemeat according to the specified recipe.

  4. Form the forcemeat into small rolls, no larger than a finger.

Wrap and bake

  1. Wrap each roll with pounded meat, moistening with 1 teaspoon of water.

  2. Fold the rolls in puff pastry.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 15 to 20 minutes, until the crust is golden.

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. Butter + vealtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,381 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

Puff pastry
Forms flaky layers that separate and crisp as the baked butter steam lifts them.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the meat and carries flavour through the filling.
Half-roasted veal, chicken, or turkey
Provides the savoury meat base and body of the filling.

The step that matters

Watch the bake. Puff pastry rises because the layered butter releases steam in the oven, lifting the dough into flaky sheets. The rolls should bake until the crust is golden and fully set, so the pastry dries and holds its shape rather than collapsing or staying soggy.

“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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