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Roast Beef Steak

A roast beef steak stuffed with forcemeat, seasoned, baked, and served with brown gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Roast Beef Steak

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Flatten the beef slice on a table.

  2. Sprinkle the inside with coarse sea salt and cayenne or black pepper.

  3. Prepare the forcemeat, adding minced onion or shallot and spices to taste.

  4. Place the forcemeat on one end of the steak.

  5. Roll it up tightly, securing it with skewers and string.

  6. Cover the rolled steak with buttered paper.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 1.5 hours or longer, depending on size.

  2. Baste it with butter throughout roasting.

  3. Twenty minutes before serving, remove the paper.

  4. Dust the meat with flour.

  5. Serve with brown gravy poured over the beef.

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

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Forms the main body of the dish and, as a lean cut, gives a firm, sliceable texture when roasted.
Forcemeat
Adds a moist, seasoned filling that keeps the rolled steak juicy as it cooks.
Butter
Basting adds fat that promotes surface browning and a rich flavour.
Flour
Dusted on the surface, it helps the meat brown and form a crisp exterior.

The step that matters

Rolling and covering the steak. The roll must be tight and secured so the filling stays inside and the meat cooks evenly. Covering with buttered paper slows surface drying early in roasting, and removing it late lets the exterior brown.

“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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