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Inside of a Sirloin of Beef Forced

A stuffed sirloin filled with a mixture of suet, bread crumbs, herbs, and wine, baked in boiling wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,973 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Inside of a Sirloin of Beef Forced

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Remove the fat from the inside of the sirloin and cut out the meat close to the bone.

  2. Chop the meat small and mix it with suet, bread crumbs, lemon peel, thyme, pepper, coarse sea salt, grated nutmeg, and chopped shallots.

  3. Add red wine to the mixture and stuff it back into the sirloin.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover the meat with the skin and fat, skewer it down, and cover with paper.

  2. Bake in a pan with boiling wine for 3 hours, dredging with flour.

  3. Skim off the fat, dish the meat, and strain the gravy over it.

  4. Garnish with pickles and serve hot.

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. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  2. Thyme + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Thyme + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

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

  5. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sirloin of beef
Forms the outer roast that holds the stuffing and is cooked until tender.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the chopped meat and stuffing moist during the long bake.
Crumbs of bread
Absorbs moisture and fat, giving the stuffing a softer, binding body.
Shallots
Add sharp, savoury aromatic flavour to the stuffing.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Bake in a pan with boiling wine for 3 hours, dredging with flour. A long, gentle bake with liquid in the pan keeps the large roast from drying out while the connective tissue softens. Dredging with flour helps the surface brown and thicken the gravy.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, bread, lemon, thyme, pepper, shallot, red wine):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, lemon, thyme, pepper, shallot, red wine. 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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