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Beef, Rolled

Beef, Rolled is a marinated, forcemeat-wrapped beef roll baked for about an hour, served with piquante sauce and red‑currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Port wine and currant work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 356 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Beef, Rolled

Ingredients

Directions

Marinate and drain

  1. Pour the port and vinegar over the beef and let it marinate for 2 days, basting frequently and turning at least once.

  2. Drain the beef well and flatten it slightly.

Prepare and roll

  1. Cover the beef with forcemeat, roll it up tightly, and bind it with kitchen twine.

  2. Place the roll in a baking dish, add the allspice to the marinade, and pour it over the beef.

Cook and serve

  1. Cook gently for about 1 hour, basting frequently.

  2. Serve with piquante sauce and red-currant jelly, or substitute with brown sauce or 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. Port wine + curranttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together356 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Allspice + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,359 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

  3. Port wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  4. Vinegar + curranttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together693 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Vinegar + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,548 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Fillet of beef
Lean main cut that forms the body of the dish and absorbs flavour from the marinade.
Port wine
Adds depth and a touch of sweetness to the marinade and the beef's surface.
Vinegar
Acidity in the marinade helps loosen the beef's surface and adds a sharp tang.
Forcemeat
Fills the centre of the roll, adding moisture and richness around the lean beef.
Pounded allspice
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the marinade.

The step that matters

Cook gently and baste. Gentle heat cooks the lean fillet evenly and keeps the outside from drying out or toughening. Frequent basting adds moisture to the surface, helping it stay tender and browned.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, port wine, vinegar, allspice, sauce):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Plumfits better
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, port wine, vinegar, allspice, sauce. 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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