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Cold Roast Beef

Cold slices of roast beef served with a tomato and gravy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cold Roast Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan and add the chopped onion. Cook for about 5 minutes.

  2. Add the tomatoes, gravy, Worcestershire sauce, mustard, salt, and cayenne. Stir until smooth.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the slices of beef to the mixture and heat until the beef is hot.

  2. Serve immediately.

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. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Beef + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 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

Rare roast beef
Is the main protein, warmed through in the sauce rather than cooked further.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body to the sauce, balancing the richness of the gravy and butter.
Gravy
Provides savory depth and moisture that carries the flavor of the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps soften and sweeten the cooking onion.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savory base flavor as it cooks in butter.

The step that matters

Heating the beef in the sauce. Beef already cooked rare can toughen and dry out if held at high heat for long. Heat it only until warmed through so it stays tender and juicy.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, tomato, onion, butter, sauce, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, tomato, onion, butter, sauce, 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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