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Delicious Pot Roast

A slow-cooked beef roast with onions, peppers, carrots, tomatoes, and mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Delicious Pot Roast

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Brown the beef in butter or fat in a pot.

  2. Add the chopped onion, green pepper, flour, carrot, salt, pepper, and tomatoes.

  3. Cook slowly until the meat is tender.

  4. Strain the gravy and add the strained mushrooms.

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. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

Beef
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender with slow cooking.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and liquid that builds the savoury gravy base.
Butter or fat
Carries the heat for browning the beef, adding flavour to the surface.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and body to the gravy.

The step that matters

Brown the beef in butter or fat. Browning the meat's surface triggers the Maillard reaction, which creates deep savoury flavour that carries into the gravy. Pale, steamed meat gives a flat result.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, onion, pepper, flour, carrot, mushroom. 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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