Skip to main content
Main

Roast Beef

Roast beef served with potatoes, peas, banana‑nut coating, lemon pie, and coffee.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Roast Beef

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Roast Beef

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Cook

  1. Roast the beef until cooked to your liking.

  2. Boil the potatoes until tender, then mash them.

  3. Heat the canned peas according to package instructions.

  4. Roll the bananas in nuts for a crunchy coating.

  5. Prepare the lemon pie using the pie crust and filling.

Serve

  1. Serve with coffee.

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.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Potato + peastop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,016 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  5. Banana + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,470 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Forms the main protein of the dish, providing most of its substance and savory flavor.
Potatoes
Mashed when tender, they give the dish a soft, starchy body.
Bananas
Their soft flesh provides sweetness and moisture under the nut coating.
Nuts
Add a crunchy coating and a toasty, nutty flavor to the bananas.
Pie crust
Gives structure and a flaky, buttery base for the lemon pie filling.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, potato, peas, banana, milk, sugar, butter):

  1. Peanutfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Lima beansfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, potato, peas, banana, milk, sugar, butter. 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.

More roast beef recipes

Cold Fricassee 21Fillet 16with Yorkshire Pudding 15Pie 14Steak 10Pot 9 See all 303 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesGreen PeasGreen Peas229 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipes