Name: Roast Beef and Potatoes
Ingredients: 1 sirloin beef roast; 4 medium-sized potatoes; coarse sea salt

Why it works: Beef and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,052 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Roast Beef and Potatoes

Ingredients

1 sirloin beef roast
4 medium-sized potatoes
coarse sea salt

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.

Heat the oven

Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Roast the beef and potatoes

Place the sirloin in the oven, timing it according to its size, about 1.5 hours before serving.
Peel the potatoes.
Place them in the pan around the beef.
If the potatoes are large, cut them in half lengthwise.

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.

Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,052 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

What each ingredient does

Sirloin beef roast: Provides the main meat, which cooks slowly in the oven until done.
Potatoes: Starchy flesh that roasts tender and soaks up the meat's drippings.

“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.