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Spiced Roast Beef

A roast beef seasoned with salt, pepper, flour, and a vinegar-based dressing, baked slowly with bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,928 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Spiced Roast Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the roast

  1. Make incisions in the meat in the form of a cross.

  2. Insert the slice of bacon into the incisions.

  3. Rub the roast with salt and pepper, then sprinkle with flour.

  4. Place the roast in a pan.

Season and cook

  1. In a bowl, mix vinegar, sugar, mustard, and allspice.

  2. Pour the dressing over the roast and add a little water for basting.

  3. Cook slowly until done.

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. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Flour + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,302 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

Roast from the round
Forms the main body of the dish and carries the flavour of the seasonings.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavour that melts into the meat as it cooks.
All-purpose flour
Dusted on the surface to help the outside brown and form a crust.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and tenderises the surface of the meat.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and promotes browning on the surface.

The step that matters

Cook slowly until done. Low, slow heat lets the connective tissue in a tough cut of round soften gradually while the interior stays juicy. Cooking too fast tightens the muscle fibres and leaves the meat dry and chewy.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Tarragonfits about as well
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Turmericfits about as well
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, vinegar, sugar, 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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