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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) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Roast Beef Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the roll

  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 as desired.

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

  5. Roll the steak up tightly.

  6. Skewer the meat.

  7. Bind the meat to prevent the forcemeat from escaping.

Roast and serve

  1. Cover the meat with buttered paper.

  2. Roast for 1.5 hours or longer, depending on size.

  3. Baste the meat with butter throughout the roasting process.

  4. Twenty minutes before serving, remove the paper.

  5. Dust the meat with flour.

  6. 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 + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
Its connective tissue and fat soften during long roasting, keeping the rolled slice tender and juicy.
Butter
Basting adds fat and moisture to the surface and helps it brown.
Flour
Dusting the surface helps form a browned, slightly crisp crust.

The step that matters

Roll tightly and bind the meat. A loose roll lets the forcemeat escape during roasting and cook unevenly. Tight rolling and binding keep the filling inside and hold the roll's shape so the slices cook evenly.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, butter, flour):

  1. Potatofits about as well
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, butter, 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.

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