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To Roast a Sirloin of Beef with the Inside Minced

A roast sirloin stuffed with seasoned minced beef and bread crumbs, served with horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 376 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

To Roast a Sirloin of Beef with the Inside Minced

Ingredients

Directions

Roast the beef

  1. Roast the beef until three-quarters done.

  2. Remove the meat from the underside and mince it finely.

  3. Season the minced meat with salt, pepper, and chopped shallot.

  4. Heat the minced meat with just enough gravy to moisten it.

Fill and brown

  1. Place the beef with the upper side down, fill it with the minced mixture, and sprinkle with prepared bread crumbs.

  2. Use a salamander to brown the crumbs until golden.

  3. Serve the beef with scraped horseradish around it.

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. Shallot + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together376 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  5. Flour + horseradishtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together743 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Sirloin of beef
Provides the main meat that is roasted, then partly minced to form the filling.
Shallot
Adds a mild, sharp aromatic flavour to the seasoned minced filling.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden top that browns under the salamander.
Horseradish
Adds a sharp, pungent bite that contrasts with the rich beef.

The step that matters

Heat the minced meat with gravy. Too little gravy leaves the filling dry and crumbly, while too much makes it soggy and loose. Just enough moisture lets the mince hold together and stay tender when it is packed into the beef.

Swap the horseradish

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

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