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A Sirloin of Beef

A large sirloin roast, basted with dripping and butter, seasoned with coarse sea salt, dredged with flour, and garnished with fresh horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 743 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

A Sirloin of Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wipe the beef clean and dry.

  2. Tie paper over the fatty parts to preserve them.

Season and roast

  1. Baste the beef immediately with dripping and continue to baste frequently.

  2. Sprinkle the beef with a little coarse sea salt.

  3. Baste the beef with butter.

  4. Dredge the beef with flour.

  5. Roast the beef for nearly four hours.

Serve

  1. Remove the roast from heat and dish it up.

  2. Garnish with finely scraped fresh horseradish.

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. Flour + horseradishtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together743 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Beef + horseradishtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together491 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  4. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Beef + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Sirloin of beef
Forms the main body of the roast, providing the meat that is cooked and carved.
Dripping
Fat that coats the surface during basting, keeping it moist and promoting browning.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour during basting and helps the surface brown.
Flour
Dredged onto the surface, it helps form a browned, slightly crisp crust.

The step that matters

Baste the beef immediately and frequently. Basting spreads melted fat over the surface, which limits moisture loss during a long roast and encourages even browning.

Swap the horseradish

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, flour. 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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