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Rolled Steak

A steak rolled with forcemeat, browned, stewed in stock, thickened with cornflour, and served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Rolled Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the steak

  1. Lay the steak flat on a surface and season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  2. Place a roll of forcemeat at one end of the steak and roll it tightly.

  3. Bind the rolled steak securely with twine to prevent the forcemeat from escaping.

Stew and thicken

  1. Melt a little butter in a stewpan and brown the steak evenly on all sides.

  2. Add enough stock to half cover the steak and stew gently for two hours, turning halfway through.

  3. Mix cornflour with water to a smooth paste and add to the gravy to thicken.

  4. Boil the sauce and season with sugar browning, pepper, and salt to taste.

Serve

  1. Serve the rolled beef on a hot dish, straining part of the gravy over it and the rest in a tureen.

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. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,401 recipes

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

Pepper and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,401 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 becomes tender through slow stewing.
Forcemeat
Fills the roll, adding flavour and a moist, savoury centre to the beef.
Cornflour
Thickens the stock into a smooth gravy as it heats.
Stock
Provides the liquid that gently cooks the steak and forms the base of the gravy.
Sugar browning
Darkens the gravy and adds a subtle caramel flavour.

The step that matters

Browning the steak evenly. Browning builds deep flavour through the Maillard reaction, which needs direct heat and a dry surface. Crowding the pan or leaving the meat wet causes steaming instead, leaving the gravy pale and flat-tasting.

“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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