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Baked Beef

A roast beef cooked in an oven, seasoned with salt and pepper, optionally dredged in flour, and baked until medium rare.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Baked Beef

Oven, in the book's wordsA very hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare and brown

  1. Wipe the beef with a wet cloth.

  2. Place it in a 400°F (200°C) oven in a dripping pan and brown it quickly.

  3. Season the beef with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

Bake and finish

  1. If desired, dredge the beef with dry flour and pour drippings over it every 15 minutes while baking.

  2. Do not add water to the pan; use butter or bacon if the beef is not fatty enough.

  3. Bake for 15 minutes per pound for medium rare.

  4. Make gravy as directed in the roast beef recipe.

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. 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
Is the main cut that is browned and roasted to the desired doneness.
Dry flour
Dredging coats the surface, helping it brown and thickening the drippings for gravy.
Butter or bacon or salt pork
Adds fat to the pan when the beef is lean, helping browning and flavour.

The step that matters

Browning the beef quickly at 400°F. A hot oven sears the surface so browning and flavour develop while the interior stays juicy. Adding water to the pan would steam the meat instead of browning it, so the surface would not develop its colour.

“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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