Name: Roast Beef
Ingredients: beef; green peas; milk; plum sauce

Why it works: Peas and plum work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 62 recipes. Both carry 2-heptenal, which smells green. The science ↓

Roast Beef

Ingredients

beef
green peas
milk
plum sauce

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.

Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Season the beef with salt and place it in a roasting pan.
Roast the beef in the oven until it reaches your desired doneness.
While the beef is roasting, prepare the green peas by boiling them until tender.
Serve the roast beef with green peas and drizzle with plum sauce.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Peas + plumtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together62 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-heptenal (green).
Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,759 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).
Milk + plumtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together406 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Beef + peastop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,044 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Peas + milktop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,309 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).