Name: A Nice Way to Serve Cold Beef
Ingredients: Cold roast beef, sliced; Gravy (enough to cover the beef); ⅓ cup catsup or wine, or 1 lemon, sliced thin; Hot water; 2 tablespoons butter; 1 teaspoon browned flour; 1 leek, sliced thin (optional); 1 bunch parsley, chopped (optional); Boiled or mashed potatoes, for serving

Why it works: Leek and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 759 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

A Nice Way to Serve Cold Beef

Ingredients

Cold roast beef, sliced
Gravy (enough to cover the beef)
⅓ cup catsup or wine, or 1 lemon, sliced thin
Hot water
2 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon browned flour
1 leek, sliced thin (optional)
1 bunch parsley, chopped (optional)
Boiled or mashed potatoes, for serving

Directions

Prepare

Slice the cold roast beef and place it in a stew pan.
Cover the beef with gravy, or if unavailable, add hot water, butter, and browned flour.

Simmer and serve

Cover the stew pan tightly and let it simmer gently for 30 minutes.
If desired, add sliced leek and chopped parsley before serving.
Serve with boiled or mashed potatoes.

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.

Leek + parsleytop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together759 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Parsley + potatotop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,855 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Leek + potatotop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together30 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,052 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).
Flour + leektop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together328 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold roast beef: Is the main ingredient that gets warmed through and tenderised in the gravy.
Butter: Adds richness and fat that give the gravy a smooth, rounded flavour.
Browned flour: Thickens the liquid and adds a toasted, nutty colour and flavour to the gravy.

The step that matters

Simmer gently with the lid on. A gentle simmer with the pan tightly covered keeps the liquid from reducing too fast and toughening the beef. Vigorous boiling can make the meat dry and stringy, so the heat should stay low.

Swap the leek

The recipe marks leek as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, wine, butter, flour, parsley, potato):

Chivefits better
Shallotfits better
Carrotfits about as well
Leekthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, wine, butter, flour, parsley, potato. 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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A Nice Way to Serve Cold Beef