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Dessert

To Dress Cold Roast Beef

A sauce made by frying diced roast beef with onion, parsley, lemon thyme, then simmering with gravy, vinegar, and mushroom catsup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

To Dress Cold Roast Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Dredge the diced beef with flour.

  2. Fry the beef in butter for 3–4 minutes with the onion, parsley, and lemon thyme.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a saucepan.

Simmer and serve

  1. Add the well-seasoned gravy, vinegar, and mushroom catsup.

  2. Simmer for 30 minutes.

  3. Serve topped with poached eggs.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 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. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 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

Beef
Provides the main body and meaty flavour of the dressing.
Flour
Coats the beef so it browns in the butter and helps thicken the sauce.
Butter
Fat for frying that carries flavour and promotes browning of the beef and onion.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aroma as it softens and browns in the butter.
Well-seasoned gravy
Supplies the liquid and savoury depth that makes the mixture a moist dressing.

The step that matters

Simmer for 30 minutes. Simmering gently lets the flour-coated beef thicken the gravy and blend flavours. A hard boil can toughen the meat and reduce the liquid unevenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, flour, butter, parsley, lemon, thyme, vinegar):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, butter, parsley, lemon, thyme, 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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