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Pot Roast with Brown or Horseradish Sauce

A pot roast cooked slowly with onions, carrots, celery, tomatoes, and a brown sauce, optionally finished with horse radish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Pot Roast with Brown or Horseradish Sauce

Oven, in the book's wordsA very moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Season the beef with salt, pepper, and ginger.

  2. Let it stand for 3 to 4 hours.

  3. In a hot kettle, brown the beef quickly on both sides.

Braise

  1. Place the sliced onion, carrot, celery, and tomatoes on top of the meat.

  2. Add 1 pint of boiling water.

  3. Cover tightly.

  4. Cook slowly for about 3 hours or until the meat is tender.

  5. Remove the meat to a hot platter.

Make the sauce

  1. Add 1 tablespoon of flour to the kettle. Stir until smooth.

  2. Add more water or soup stock if necessary.

  3. Heat the mixture to boiling, stirring constantly.

  4. Strain.

  5. Add chopped parsley and season to taste.

  6. If desired, stir in 3 tablespoons of horse-radish into the sauce.

  7. Serve the sauce in a gravy boat.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Ginger + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,377 recipes

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

  3. Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef brisket or shoulder
Becomes tender through slow cooking and provides the meat and rich drippings for the sauce.
Onion, carrot, and celery
Release sugars and aromatics into the cooking liquid, building flavour for the sauce.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body to the braising liquid, deepening the colour and taste of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the strained cooking liquid into a smooth brown sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the beef quickly on both sides. Searing creates browned surface flavour through the Maillard reaction. Crowding the pan or stirring too early stops browning and steams the meat, leaving the sauce flatter.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, onion, carrot, celery, tomato, flour):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, onion, carrot, celery, tomato, 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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