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Boast Beef Steak

A beef steak rolled with forcemeat, seasoned, and roasted, served with brown gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Boast Beef Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Flatten the beef slice on a table and sprinkle the inside with fine salt and cayenne or black pepper.

  2. Prepare the forcemeat, adding minced onion or shallot and spices if desired.

  3. Place the forcemeat on one end of the steak and roll it up tightly.

  4. Skewer and bind the meat to prevent the forcemeat from escaping.

Roast and serve

  1. Cover the meat with buttered paper and roast for 1.5 hours or longer, depending on size.

  2. Twenty minutes before serving, remove the paper and flour the meat, basting it with butter throughout roasting.

  3. Serve with brown gravy poured over the beef.

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

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef rump steak
Forms the main meat; its thickness and size determine the roasting time.
Forcemeat
Fills the roll, adding moisture and savoury flavour to the lean beef as it cooks.
Butter
Basting fat that keeps the surface moist and encourages gentle browning during roasting.

The step that matters

Roasting under buttered paper. The paper shields the meat from direct heat so it cooks through without drying or scorching, while basting keeps the surface moist. Cooking for the full time matters because the forcemeat in the centre must be fully heated.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, butter):

  1. Potatofits about as well
  2. Onionthe original
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Tomatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, butter. 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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