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Beef Roll

A rolled beef dish seasoned with herbs, baked, and sliced thinly to serve cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and summer savory work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 671 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Beef Roll

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. Finely chop the round steak.

  2. Season the chopped steak with salt, pepper, and your choice of herb.

  3. Thoroughly beat the eggs.

  4. Mix the beaten eggs into the seasoned beef.

  5. Roll the mixture up tightly.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the rolled beef in a dripping pan.

  2. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for nearly an hour.

  3. Let the baked roll cool.

  4. Slice thinly to serve cold.

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 + summer savorytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together671 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Egg + summer savorytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together327 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  3. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

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

Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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

Round steak
Forms the main body of the roll and gives it a meaty, sliceable texture.
Eggs
Bind the chopped beef together so the roll holds its shape when sliced.

The step that matters

Roll the mixture up tightly. A tight roll keeps the chopped beef compact and binds it together, so the roll holds its shape in the oven and slices cleanly when cold.

Swap the summer savory

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Dillfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Summer savorythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, 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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