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Tinned Roast Beef with Macaroni

A stew of tinned roast beef, onions, tomatoes, and macaroni simmered in a gravy of browned onions, flour, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tinned Roast Beef with Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a pot, heat the dripping and brown the chopped onions.

  2. Stir in the flour, then add the boiling water.

  3. Add the tomatoes and tinned beef to the pot.

Finish the dish

  1. Cook the macaroni in boiling salted water until tender, then add it to the pot.

  2. Season with salt and pepper, and simmer for twenty minutes.

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. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + beeftop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

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

  4. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

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

Onions
Browned in dripping, they build savory sweetness and depth for the sauce.
Flour
Stirred into the hot fat and liquid, it thickens the sauce to a coating consistency.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and moisture, helping to form the body of the sauce.
Tinned beef
Provides the main protein and savory meaty flavor of the dish.
Macaroni
Absorbs sauce as it cooks, adding starch and bulk to the finished dish.
Dripping
Fat for browning the onions, adding richness and flavor.

The step that matters

Browning the onions. Onions cooked slowly until deeply browned develop sweetness and savory flavor through the Maillard reaction and caramelization. Pale, undercooked onions leave the sauce flat-tasting.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, tomato, beef, 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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