Skip to main content
Main

Beef

A dish of beef steaks stuffed with a forcemeat mixture of veal, ham, truffles, herbs, and spices, then braised in mushroom gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the forcemeat

  1. Chop the veal and ham finely.

  2. Mix the chopped veal and ham with any leftover cooked fowl trimmings.

  3. Pound the mixture in a mortar until well combined.

  4. Add the chopped truffles, sweet herbs, nutmeg, salt, pepper, and egg yolks to form a mass.

Roll and brown

  1. Trim the steaks into square shapes.

  2. Cover the trimmed steaks with the forcemeat.

  3. Roll the steaks tightly and secure with string or tape.

  4. Dredge the rolled steaks with flour.

  5. Brown the rolled steaks in butter in a saucepan.

  6. Remove excess butter.

Braise and serve

  1. Add mushrooms.

  2. Add shallots.

  3. Add a lump of butter kneaded with flour.

  4. Add salt and pepper.

  5. Add gravy and port wine.

  6. Cover and cook gently for about an hour.

  7. Remove the meat.

  8. Discard the string.

  9. Place on a dish.

  10. Skim fat from the sauce.

  11. Pour over the meat.

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. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  4. Veal + truffletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together815 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Veal + beeftop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Forms the main lean, tender body of the forcemeat that wraps the steaks.
Egg yolks
Bind the forcemeat so it holds together as a mass around the steaks.
Butter
Browns the rolled steaks and enriches the sauce with fat and flavour.
Flour
Coats the rolled steaks for browning and thickens the sauce when kneaded with butter.
Port wine
Adds acidity and sweetness that deepen the flavour of the gravy sauce.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and moisture to the sauce during gentle cooking.

The step that matters

Rolling the steaks tightly. A loose roll can open or let the forcemeat fall out during browning and gentle cooking. Tight rolling and secure tying keep the filling in place and the shape even as the meat cooks.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, beef, truffle, pepper, egg, flour):

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, beef, truffle, pepper, egg, flour. 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.

You might also like

Beef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes