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A Pot-roast with Vegetables

A pot roast cooked with vegetables and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

A Pot-roast with Vegetables

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Chop the beef into pieces and coat with flour.

  2. Brown the beef in bacon fat in a large pot.

Braise

  1. Add boiling water and place in a cooker on hot soapstone.

  2. Prepare the vegetables by boiling them, except for the onions.

  3. When the meat is nearly tender, open the cooker and add salt.

Serve

  1. Serve the roast on a large platter with vegetables around it and gravy in a bowl.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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

Round beef
Provides the meat that becomes tender during slow, moist cooking.
Flour
Coats the beef so it browns well and thickens the pan liquid into gravy.
Bacon fat
Carries heat for browning the beef and adds rich, savory flavor.
Potatoes
Absorb cooking liquid and add starch and body to the dish.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and color to the platter.

The step that matters

When the meat is nearly tender, open the cooker and add salt.. Salt added early can toughen meat fibers and slow tenderizing, so adding it near the end lets the beef soften first. Opening the cooker late also changes the cooking moisture and heat, so timing matters.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, flour, potato, carrot, turnip):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, potato, carrot, turnip. 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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