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Pot Roast

A hearty beef pot roast cooked with onions, carrots, bay leaves, flour, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Pot Roast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a large pot, place the beef and beef dripping.

  2. Add the chopped onions, carrots, and bay leaves.

Cook

  1. Simmer for 20 minutes, turning the meat frequently to prevent sticking.

  2. Stir in the dry flour and season with pepper and salt.

  3. Gradually add the boiling water while stirring, and simmer for another 20 minutes.

  4. Cover with boiling water and cook until the meat is tender.

  5. Serve hot.

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 + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Beef + carrottop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,606 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

Lean beef
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through long, slow cooking.
Beef dripping
Adds fat for browning the meat and carries much of the savory beef flavour.
Onions
Release sweetness and aroma as they cook, building the base flavour of the sauce.
Dry flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy as it is stirred in and heated.

The step that matters

Turning the meat frequently while simmering. Meat resting against the pot bottom can scorch and stick, so turning it often keeps it moving in the liquid and helps it cook evenly.

Swap the onion

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

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

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