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Rolled Beef That Equals Hare

Rolled beef stuffed with fine stuffing, seasoned with port wine, vinegar, allspice, served with gravy, currant jelly, and melted butter.

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 ↓

Rolled Beef That Equals Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the inside of the sirloin in a mixture of port wine and vinegar for 48 hours.

  2. Prepare a fine stuffing and tightly bind it inside the meat.

  3. Lard the meat for improved appearance and flavor.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the meat on a hanging spit, basting it with the remaining port wine, vinegar, and allspice.

  2. Serve with rich gravy, currant jelly, and melted butter in separate dishes.

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. Port wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Sirloin
Forms the main body of the roll and carries the flavour of the soak and stuffing.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth to the meat during soaking and basting.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that helps tenderise the meat during the long soak.
Fine stuffing
Fills the centre of the roll, adding texture and moisture as the meat cooks.

The step that matters

Soaking the sirloin for 48 hours. Acid from the vinegar slowly softens the muscle fibres, so the soak must be long enough to tenderise the meat without making its surface mushy.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (port wine, vinegar, currant, butter):

  1. Allspicethe original
  2. Clovefits about as well
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against port wine, vinegar, currant, butter. 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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