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Delicious Pot Roast

A slow‑cooked rib roast simmered in water, brown sugar, sherry, onion, bay leaf, and cloves, finished with a flour‑based gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,901 recipes. Both carry 2-nonanone, which smells fruity, floral. The science ↓

Delicious Pot Roast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the roast and sear it in a skillet until rich brown.

Braise

  1. In a pot, combine boiling water, brown sugar, sherry, bay leaf, whole onion, and cloves.

  2. Add the roast and boil gently for four hours.

  3. Add salt during the last hour of cooking.

  4. If using a rib roast, leave the rib in.

  5. If more liquid is needed, use only boiling water.

Finish and serve

  1. When done, remove the roast from the pot.

  2. Mix flour with water to create gravy and add to the pot.

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 + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  2. Sherry + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,237 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Clove + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,671 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 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

Rib roast
Large cut of beef that becomes tender and moist during long, slow cooking.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface of the meat brown and deepen in color.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the cooking liquid.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into gravy as it is stirred in.

The step that matters

Sear the roast until rich brown. Searing triggers the Maillard reaction, which builds deep browned flavor on the surface. Pale searing leaves the finished gravy and meat tasting flat.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, sherry, clove, 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.

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