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Roast Beef and Round Potatoes

A roast beef served with potato balls seasoned with salt, pepper, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,052 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Roast Beef and Round Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Roast the beef

  1. Roast the beef in the usual manner.

  2. About 30 minutes before it's done, pour off ¾ of the gravy from the pan.

Make and cook the potato balls

  1. In a bowl, mash the potatoes and mix in salt, pepper, and the raw egg.

  2. Mould the potato mixture into balls and roll them in flour.

  3. Place the potato balls around the meat and turn them as they brown.

Serve

  1. When done, drain off the grease and serve with the beef.

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 + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 roast
Is the main dish, cooked whole in the pan until done.
3 medium potatoes

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, egg, flour):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, egg, flour. 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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