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Dinner on Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday

A simple roast beef served with sliced bread and boiled or steamed potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 ↓

Dinner on Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Roast the beef until cooked to your liking.

  2. Serve with sliced bread.

  3. Boil or steam the potatoes until tender.

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 + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Bread + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together434 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Main protein; heat firms its proteins, giving structure and browned flavour.
Bread
Adds starch and soaks up meat juices as an accompaniment.
Potatoes
Starch that turns tender and fluffy when boiled or steamed.

The step that matters

Roast the beef until cooked to your liking. Heat firms the meat's proteins and squeezes out moisture, so going past your preferred doneness makes beef tough and dry. Checking doneness before it is fully cooked keeps it juicy.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, bread):

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Onionfits about as well
  3. Potatothe original
  4. Leekfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread. 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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