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Roast Beef

Roast beef with onions, carrots, turnip, herbs, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Roast Beef

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. 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.

Prepare

  1. Have the butcher prepare the ribs of beef for roasting, removing the bones if desired, and secure with twine.

  2. Place the beef in a dripping pan on a bed of chopped onion, carrot, turnip, parsley, thyme, and bay leaves.

  3. Do not add water.

Roast

  1. Do not season the beef until the surface is partly carbonized.

  2. Roast the beef in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 15 to 20 minutes per pound, seasoning when half done.

  3. Keep the beef hot until served.

  4. Serve as soon as possible for best flavor.

Make the gravy

  1. Add ½ pint of hot water to the dripping pan after removing the vegetables.

  2. Boil until thickened.

  3. If desired, mix 1 teaspoon of flour with cold water before stirring it into the gravy to thicken.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef ribs
Provide the main meat, whose fat renders and whose surface browns in the hot oven.
Onion, carrot and turnip
Form a bed under the beef that adds aromatic sweetness and flavor to the drippings for the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as its starch swells when heated in the liquid.

The step that matters

Seasoning timing. Salting only after the surface partly browns keeps the drippings from drawing out moisture early, so the crust forms by Maillard browning rather than steaming. Seasoning at half-time then adds flavor through the roast.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, parsley, thyme, 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.

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