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Canned Roast Beef with Brown Sauce

A quick sauce made from butter, onion, carrot, flour, stock, and seasonings, served over canned roast beef.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Canned Roast Beef with Brown Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine butter, onion, and carrot in a saucepan. Cook until onion is tender but not brown.

  2. Remove from heat, add flour, stir until smooth.

  3. Return to heat, slowly add cold stock or milk, stir until smooth. Boil for 5 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Add seasoning, pour over the meat, heat through.

  2. Serve on toast or toast points, sprinkled with parsley.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Beef + lambtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together896 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Fat that cooks the onion and carrot gently and carries flavor into the sauce.
Flour
Starch that thickens the stock or milk into a smooth, lightly bodied brown sauce.
Lamb stock or milk
Liquid that hydrates the flour and forms the body of the sauce.
Canned roast beef
Cooked meat that is heated through in the sauce, providing the main protein.
Caramel
Adds deeper color and a mild, slightly bittersweet flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the cold stock or milk. Flour must be stirred smooth into the fat before cold liquid is added slowly. Adding liquid too fast or to hot fat can form lumps, because starch granules clump before they can disperse evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, butter, flour, carrot, parsley, lamb):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, flour, carrot, parsley, lamb. 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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