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Pot-roast

A slow‑cooked beef roast simmered in water with flour, pepper, salt, parsley, and optional suet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Pot-roast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Trim the meat of all dried skin and fat.

  2. Brown all sides of the trimmed meat in a hot skillet.

Braise

  1. Place the browned meat in an agate‑ware pot, pour 1 cup of boiling water, cover, and boil for 1 minute.

  2. Turn the meat and boil the other side to seal in the juices.

  3. Add a meat rack to the pot, ensuring it is at least 2 inches above the water.

  4. Dredge the meat with flour and dust with black pepper, then place it on the rack.

  5. Cover the pot and cook gently for 3 hours, adding more boiling water as needed to maintain 1 cup.

  6. After 2.5 hours, sprinkle ½ teaspoon of salt and 1 tablespoon of parsley over the meat.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Remove the rack, blend 1 dessert spoon of flour with cold water, and stir into the gravy, adding salt to taste.

  2. Cover and simmer gently for the last 30 minutes.

  3. Serve the meat on a warm platter garnished with parsley or celery, and pour the gravy into a sauceboat.

  4. If desired, fry a piece of suet and serve alongside the meat.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  3. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Beef + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,866 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. 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

Beef roast
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle moist cooking.
Flour
Dredged on the meat and blended into the gravy to thicken the cooking liquid.
Boiling water
Forms the moist cooking liquid that braises the meat and becomes the base of the gravy.

The step that matters

Gentle cooking with the meat above the water. Keeping the liquid at a gentle simmer and the meat on a rack above it lets connective tissue soften slowly without boiling the meat tough. Adding water as it evaporates keeps the gravy base from drying out or scorching.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Jalapenofits about as well
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, 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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