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Beef Roll, Or, Canellon Be Bceuf.

A beef roll with bacon, macaroni, butter, and tomato paste, simmered for hours and served with Parmesan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 Be Bceuf.

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Chop and mix the beef and bacon thoroughly.

  2. Season with pepper, salt, and nutmeg.

  3. Bind and tie the meat closely to prevent stuffing from escaping.

Simmer the roll

  1. In a large stewpan, melt the butter and bring to a boil.

  2. Add the meat and let it simmer for 5-6 hours, turning every 30 minutes.

Make the macaroni and serve

  1. Boil the macaroni for 25 minutes, then drain it well.

  2. Mix the macaroni with the beef gravy (without butter), salad oil, and paste tomatoes.

  3. Serve with a generous sprinkle of Parmesan cheese.

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. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Beef + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

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

  4. Butter + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Tomato + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,490 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lean tender beef
Forms the main body of the roll and gives the dish its meaty texture.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour that keeps the lean beef moist during long simmering.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the cooking liquid, carrying flavour into the meat.
Pipe macaroni
Provides the starchy base that soaks up the gravy and tomato mixture.
Paste tomatoes
Adds acidity and body to the sauce tossed with the macaroni.

The step that matters

Tie the meat closely before simmering. Tight binding holds the stuffing in place so it does not escape into the liquid during the long simmer, keeping the roll's shape and texture intact.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Basilfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

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