Name: Time Table for Roasting Beef
Ingredients: four teaspoons of fat in pan; four tablespoons flour; one-half cups boiling water; five pounds; ten pounds; salt; pepper

Why it works: Flour and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50,459 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Time Table for Roasting Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Roast

Roast sirloin or rib, rare, weight five pounds, for one hour and five minutes.
Roast sirloin or rib, well done, weight five pounds, for one hour and twenty minutes.
Roast sirloin or rib, rare, weight five pounds, for one hour and thirty minutes.
Roast sirloin or rib, well done, weight ten pounds, for one hour and fifty minutes.

Make the gravy

Make gravy from roast beef.
Leave four teaspoons of fat in pan.
Add four tablespoons flour and stir until well browned.
Add gradually one and one-half cups boiling water.
Cook five minutes.
Season with salt and pepper, then strain.
If flour burns in pan, gravy will be full of black particles.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

461Calories

13 gProtein

1 gFat

96 gCarbs

Counts 3 of 4 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 3 portions

Ingredient	Portion assumed	kcal
Flour	1 cup (125g) all-purpose	455
Black Pepper	1 tsp ground (2.3g)	6
Salt	1 tsp (6g)	0
Water	not in our table	0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Chicago. Bethany union church. Woman's society. [from old catalog]. 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. See the original page.

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.

Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together50,459 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour: Thickens the gravy as its starch swells, and browning it adds savoury flavour.
Beef (in the method): Supplies the main meat and the drippings that flavour the gravy.
Fat: Carries pan flavours and cooks the flour, helping it brown evenly.
Boiling water: Dilutes the browned flour into a pourable liquid that thickens as it cooks.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Flour must brown to a rich colour without burning. Gentle browning develops nutty, roasted flavour through Maillard reactions. Past that point the starch scorches, producing black specks and a bitter taste that the gravy cannot hide.

“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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Time Table for Roasting Beef