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Pot Roast Beef

A beef roast browned then simmered in water with flour and salt until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,677 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pot Roast Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the beef

  1. Trim excess fat from the beef and fry it in an iron pot for a few minutes.

  2. Sprinkle the beef with flour and brown it on all sides.

Braise and finish

  1. Pour in hot water to cover the beef, cover lightly, and cook until tender.

  2. Add boiling water at intervals to prevent burning.

  3. Thicken the gravy and pour it around the meat on the plate.

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 + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Beef and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,677 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
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through slow, moist cooking.
Flour
Coats the meat so it browns well and thickens the gravy.

The step that matters

Adding boiling water at intervals. Adding water in small amounts keeps the pot liquid from boiling away completely, which would let the meat scorch. Boiling water keeps the simmer steady rather than cooling the pot and slowing the cooking.

“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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