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A Nice Way to Serve Cold Beef

Cold roast beef served with gravy, catsup or wine or lemon, optional leek and parsley, accompanied by potatoes, mustard, and tomato catsup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Leek and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 759 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

A Nice Way to Serve Cold Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the cold roast beef and place it in a serving dish.

  2. Cover the beef with gravy and add catsup or wine, or lemon slices.

  3. If you don't have gravy, combine hot water, butter, and browned flour in a covered saucepan.

  4. Simmer gently for 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. If desired, add sliced leek and chopped parsley to the beef before serving.

  2. Serve with boiled or mashed potatoes, mustard, and tomato catsup.

  3. For dessert, offer ripe fruit or pie.

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. Leek + parsleytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together759 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Parsley + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  3. Leek + potatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Leek + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together21 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Potato + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,340 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

Gravy
Keeps the cold beef moist and adds savory flavour across the slices.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and gives the gravy a smooth body.
Browned flour
Thickens the liquid and adds a toasted, nutty colour and flavour to the gravy.
Catsup or wine
Adds acidity and sweetness that brighten the rich, savoury beef.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 30 minutes. Simmering gently rather than boiling lets the flour thicken the liquid smoothly without scorching or breaking the sauce, and lets the beef take on flavour without toughening.

Swap the leek

The recipe marks leek as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, wine, butter, flour, parsley, potato, mustard):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Horseradishfits about as well
  4. Leekthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, wine, butter, flour, parsley, potato, mustard. 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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