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To Roast Meat

A method for roasting meat, dredged in salt and flour, then simmered in boiling water with thickener to create a sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Meat and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 28% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,529 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Roast Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Prepare the meat by placing it on a rack in a pan.

  2. Dredge the meat well with coarse sea salt and then with flour.

  3. When the flour is brown, pour boiling water into the pan until it's about an inch deep.

  4. Baste and dredge the meat frequently.

Make the sauce

  1. Once done, place the meat on a heated platter.

  2. Skim all fat from the pan.

  3. Bring the liquid to a boil.

  4. Stir in the thickening.

  5. Let it boil again.

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. Meat + flourtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,529 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

Meat
The main component, which browns and cooks through in the dry pan.
Flour
Forms a browned crust on the meat and helps thicken the pan liquid.
Thickening (e.g., cornstarch or flour)
Thickens the pan liquid into a sauce when stirred in and brought to a boil.

The step that matters

Stir in the thickening, then boil again. Starch needs to reach a boil to swell and thicken the liquid. Adding it to liquid that is not yet boiling can leave lumps or a thin sauce, so the sauce should be brought to a full boil after the thickening goes in.

“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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