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Beef Roll, Or, Canellon De Bceuf.

A beef roll stuffed with bacon, seasoned with pepper, salt, nutmeg or mace, then boiled for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Beef Roll, Or, Canellon De Bceuf.

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the roll

  1. Chop and mix the beef and bacon thoroughly.

  2. Season the mixture with pepper, salt, and nutmeg or mace.

  3. Stuff the mixture into a roll and tie it tightly to prevent stuffing from escaping.

Cook

  1. In a large stewpan, melt 4 cups of butter and bring to a boil.

  2. Add the beef roll and simmer for 5 to 6 hours, turning every 30 minutes for even cooking.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  3. Beef + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,495 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean beef
Provides the main body and meaty texture of the roll.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor that keeps the lean beef moist during long cooking.
Butter (in the method)
Carries heat around the roll and adds richness during the long simmer.
Nutmeg or mace
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavor to the beef.

The step that matters

Simmering the beef roll. Holding the butter at a steady simmer for hours lets the roll cook through gently. Turning it every 30 minutes helps heat reach all sides evenly and prevents one side from overcooking or drying out.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper. 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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