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Scotch Roll

A beef roll seasoned with sugar, pepper, sea salt, cloves, vinegar, and savory, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

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

  2. Sprinkle the spices and vinegar 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.

Cook 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 and boil for an additional ½ hour; total cooking time is 4 hours.

  3. If using corn starch instead of flour, add it 3 minutes before removing from 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. Pepper + summer savorytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together671 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 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

Flank of beef
Forms the main meat that becomes tender through long, slow simmering.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens flavour and helps tenderise the meat during its rest.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and spices with a mild sweetness.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the meat deeply and draws out moisture that mixes with the spices.
Flour (in the method)
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy as it boils.

The step that matters

Simmering the rolled beef. Flank is a lean, tough cut, so it needs long, gentle simmering in water rather than a hard boil. Boiling hard toughens the outer meat and can leave the centre dry, while slow heat gradually breaks down connective tissue into tender meat.

Swap the summer savory

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Summer savorythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, sugar, pepper, clove, vinegar. 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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