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Beef Roll

A seasoned beef and bacon roll baked for two hours, served with tomato sauce or brown gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Beef Roll

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Chop the beef and bacon very fine.

  2. Season with nutmeg, coarse sea salt, and a little pepper.

  3. Add the onion, parsley, grated rind of the lemon, and juice of half the lemon.

  4. Mix in the eggs with your hands until well combined.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the mixture into a roll and wrap it in buttered paper, tying it securely with a cord.

  2. Cover the roll with a paste made of flour and water.

  3. Bake for 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Remove the paper and crust, and serve with tomato sauce or brown gravy.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the chopped meat and bacon so the roll holds its shape when sliced.
Fat bacon
Adds fat and moisture, keeping the lean beef from drying out during baking.
Lean beef
Forms the main body of the roll and provides its savory meaty flavor.

The step that matters

Shape the roll tightly and tie it securely. Eggs and finely chopped meat hold together loosely. A firm, tightly wrapped and tied shape keeps the roll compact so it does not fall apart or bake unevenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, lemon, parsley, nutmeg, egg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, lemon, parsley, nutmeg, egg. 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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