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Stuffed Steak, or Mock Duck

A round steak stuffed with a mixture of crackers, onion, sage, and butter, then baked and served with a butter-cracker gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Stuffed Steak, or Mock Duck

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Beat and roll the round steak, then sprinkle it with salt and pepper.

  2. In a bowl, mix the rolled crackers, minced onion, salt, pepper, sage, and butter.

  3. Moisten the mixture with a little water and spread it over the steak.

  4. Roll the steak up tightly and secure it with string.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the rolled steak in a baking pan with a little water and cook at 400°F (200°C), basting often.

  2. Once cooked, remove the steak and add a small piece of butter and some cracker crumbs to the pan drippings.

  3. Boil the gravy for a moment and pour it over the steak before serving.

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 + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  2. Biscuit + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together428 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Pepper + biscuittop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together841 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Biscuit + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together35 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 dish and carries the stuffing when rolled.
Rolled crackers or dry biscuits
Soak up moisture and form a soft, absorbent stuffing inside the steak.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the stuffing and to the pan gravy.
Cracker crumbs for gravy
Thicken the pan drippings into a gravy.

The step that matters

Roll the steak up tightly and secure it with string. A loose roll lets stuffing fall out and cook unevenly. Tight rolling and firm tying keep the filling inside while the meat cooks.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, biscuit, sage, 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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