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Pot Roast

A pot roast made by browning beef and simmering with vegetables in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Pot Roast

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the beef

  1. Fry the suet or butter in a pot until melted.

  2. Wipe the beef dry, then dredge it with flour.

  3. Brown the beef on all sides in the fat.

Simmer

  1. Add the chopped onion, celery, turnips, and carrot around the meat in the pot.

  2. Pour in 2 cups of boiling water and season with salt and pepper.

  3. Cover the pot and let it simmer for several hours.

Finish

  1. Once done, remove the meat and thicken the gravy if necessary.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef round
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, slow simmering.
Flour (in the method)
Coats the beef so it browns well and helps thicken the gravy.
Suet or butter
Fat for browning the beef, adding richness and flavor to the pot.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and flavor to the braising liquid as it softens.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and body to the gravy as it cooks.

The step that matters

Brown the beef on all sides. Browning creates deep flavor through the Maillard reaction. Pat the meat dry first, since surface moisture steams instead of browning. Searing well before simmering builds the base of the gravy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, butter, celery, turnip, carrot, pepper):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, celery, turnip, carrot, pepper. 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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