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Scotch Roll

A beef roll seasoned with sugar, pepper, salt, cloves, vinegar, and savory, simmered and thickened into a stew.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and summer savory match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 143 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Scotch Roll

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Remove the tough skin from the flank and even it off in thickness and shape with a sharp knife.

  2. Sprinkle the sugar, pepper, salt, ground cloves, vinegar, and summer savory over the beef.

  3. Roll up the beef tightly and tie it well with tape or strips of muslin.

  4. Set aside for 12 hours.

Simmer and thicken

  1. Place the rolled beef in a stew pan, cover with water, and simmer for 3½ hours.

  2. Thicken the gravy with flour.

  3. Boil for an additional hour; total cooking time is 4 hours.

  4. If using corn-starch, add it 3 minutes before removing from the heat.

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. Clove + summer savorytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together143 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Summer savory + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together263 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flank of beef
Provides the lean meat that is rolled, then becomes tender through long, slow simmering.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps tenderise the meat during the long rest.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharp vinegar and salt in the cure.
Flour or corn-starch
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy as it reduces and comes to the boil.

The step that matters

Simmering the rolled beef gently. A gentle simmer breaks down the tough connective tissue in flank slowly without toughening the muscle fibres. A hard boil can tighten the meat and leave it stringy, so keep the water at a quiet simmer for the full time.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, sugar, pepper, vinegar, summer savory, flour):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, sugar, pepper, vinegar, summer savory, flour. 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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