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Stuffed Steak

A steak stuffed with bread crumbs, lemon peel, suet, pepper, salt, and egg white, then cooked or stewed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Stuffed 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. Prepare the stuffing by mixing bread crumbs, lemon peel, suet, pepper, salt, and egg white in a bowl.

  2. Trim the steak, dust it with flour, and spread the stuffing over it.

  3. Roll the steak up tightly and tie it with kitchen twine.

Cook

  1. Cook the steak over a fire for 1.5 hours, turning it and the dish once, or bake it at 350°F (175°C).

  2. Alternatively, stew it in just enough water to cover, serving with gravy made from the cooking water and Liebig extract.

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

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

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Steak
Forms the main body of the dish, and slow cooking turns its tougher fibers tender.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the stuffing so it stays in place inside the roll.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing moist and rich during cooking.
Egg white
Sets when heated, helping hold the stuffing together.
Lemon peel
Adds aromatic, bright citrus flavor to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Roll the steak up tightly and tie it with kitchen twine. A loose roll can open and let the stuffing fall out during long cooking. Firm rolling and tight tying keep the layers together so the stuffing stays inside the meat.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, pepper, egg, flour):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Limefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, 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.

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