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Roast Beef

Roast beef seasoned with salt and pepper, coated in flour, baked with butter, lard, and water, and basted during cooking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Roast Beef

Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. 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. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Wash the beef in cold water, dry it, and season with salt and pepper.

  3. Dredge the beef with flour.

Roast

  1. In a roasting pan, mix butter, lard, and flour, and let it brown for a minute.

  2. Stir in hot water and place the beef in the pan, outside up.

  3. After 15 minutes, begin to baste the beef.

  4. As the water boils down, add hot water from time to time and baste often.

  5. Cook for 1.5 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. After removing the beef, skim off some fat and add boiling water to the pan.

  2. Stir well and let it boil for a few minutes before serving.

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. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Forms the main body of the roast, becoming tender and juicy as it cooks slowly.
Flour
Dredging coats the surface and, with the fat, helps form a browned crust and thicken the pan juices.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor to the roasting pan and helps the surface brown.
Lard
Provides fat that conducts heat well and helps the beef brown and crisp.

The step that matters

Basting with hot water. Water in the pan boils down during roasting, so adding hot water and basting often keeps the pan from drying out and scorching. Basting also moistens the surface, which helps it brown evenly rather than dry out.

“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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