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Braised Beef or Pot Roast

A pot roast made with beef, salt pork, vegetables, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Braised Beef or Pot Roast

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Place the salt pork on the bottom of a pan.

  3. Layer the sliced carrot, turnip, onion, and celery on top of the pork.

  4. Place the beef on the vegetables and dredge it with flour, pepper, and salt.

Braise

  1. Bake in the hot oven for 15 minutes.

  2. Add the stock or hot water and place additional vegetable slices on top of the meat.

  3. Cover the pan closely and cook slowly for 4 hours.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Once done, strain the vegetables from the gravy and garnish the platter with them.

  2. Melt the butter in a pan, stir in 1 tablespoon of flour, and slowly add the gravy.

  3. Cook for 10 minutes and serve as gravy with the meat.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  4. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Slow cooking in liquid turns the tough lower round cut tender and juicy.
Salt pork
Renders fat into the pan, adding richness and savory flavor to the meat and vegetables.
Flour
Coats the beef and later thickens the gravy so it becomes smooth and body-rich.
Carrot, turnip, onion, and celery
Release sugars and aromatic flavor into the braising liquid, sweetening and deepening the gravy.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor to the roux that thickens the gravy.

The step that matters

Cover the pan closely and cook slowly for 4 hours. Low, moist, covered heat breaks down the tough connective tissue in the lower round. Cooking too hot or uncovered dries the meat and reduces the liquid before the beef turns tender.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, carrot, turnip, celery, flour, pepper. 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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