Skip to main content
Main

Roast Beef

Roast beef seasoned with flour, salt, pepper, Worcestershire sauce, and tomato ketchup, baked until desired doneness.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Roast Beef

Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Roast Beef

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

  1. Dredge the beef roast lightly with flour and season with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  2. Place the roast in the oven at 400°F (200°C) and baste frequently while roasting.

  3. Allow 15 minutes per pound for rare, longer for well done.

  4. Serve with a sauce made from the drippings, adding Worcestershire sauce and tomato ketchup.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef roast
The main protein; its fat and connective tissue add moisture and flavour as it cooks.
Flour
Coats the surface so it browns, and helps thicken the pan drippings into a sauce.

The step that matters

Judging doneness by time. Minutes per pound is only an estimate, since roast size and shape vary. The meat keeps cooking after it leaves the oven, so the interior temperature, not elapsed time alone, determines whether it is rare or well done.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, pepper, sauce, ketchup. 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 roast beef recipes

Cold Fricassee 21Fillet 16with Yorkshire Pudding 15Pie 14Steak 10Pot 9 See all 303 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes