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Grilled Beef on Toast

Sliced roast beef is broiled and served on toast with a sauce of butter, Worcestershire, ketchup, mustard, onion juice, and lemon or vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Grilled Beef on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Cut the cold roast into half-inch slices.

  2. Dip each slice in melted butter or olive oil.

Broil and sauce

  1. Arrange the slices in a broiler and broil quickly over a clear fire.

  2. In a small saucepan, combine hot water or stock, butter, Worcestershire sauce, tomato ketchup, salt, pepper, mustard, onion juice, and lemon juice or vinegar.

  3. Dip each slice of broiled meat into the sauce.

Serve

  1. Serve the meat on toast and pour the remaining sauce over it.

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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Beef + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 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

Cold roast beef
Provides the meat that is warmed, dipped and served over toast.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savoury depth and tang to the sauce.
Tomato ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity to the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the sauce.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, butter, sauce, tomato, ketchup, pepper, onion):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, sauce, tomato, ketchup, pepper, onion. 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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