Skip to main content
Main

Pot Roast

A slow-cooked roast with tomato gravy thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Pot Roast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and sear

  1. Wipe the roast with a damp cloth and trim off some suet.

  2. In a pot, sear the roast on all sides in the suet.

  3. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Cook the roast

  1. Cook over a very low gas flame with the lid on until tender; do not add water.

  2. Pour the can of tomatoes over the roast and cook for 15 minutes.

Make the gravy

  1. Remove the roast from the pot and add enough flour to thicken the gravy.

  2. Brown the flour, then add cold water to make sufficient gravy.

  3. Season the gravy to taste with salt and pepper.

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. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Tomato + flourtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,065 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

Roast
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender through slow cooking.
Suet
Provides fat for searing, building browned flavor on the surface of the roast.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and flavor to the cooking liquid during the final braise.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as its starch swells in the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Cook over a very low gas flame with the lid on; do not add water. Low, covered heat lets the tough connective tissue in the roast break down slowly into tender meat. Higher heat can scorch the bottom before the inside softens, and the roast's own juices create the moisture needed.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, 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.

More pot roast recipes

Beef 9Beef 5Mutton 4Veal 4Chicken 3Veal 3 See all 137 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesCream Tomato SoupCream Tomato Soup28 recipes