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Roast Beef

Roast beef marinated with olive oil, pepper, salt, lemon juice, parsley, onion, and bay leaves, then baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Roast Beef

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Roast Beef

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Mix olive oil, black pepper, coarse sea salt, lemon juice, chopped parsley, chopped onion, and bay leaves in a bowl.

  2. Spread the mixture over the beef roast.

  3. Cover and refrigerate overnight.

Roast

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Place the roast in the oven with the mixture and roast until cooked to your preference.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Olive + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 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 roast
Forms the main body of the dish and provides the meat that cooks through during roasting.
Olive oil
Carries the seasonings and helps keep the surface of the meat moist during roasting.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and moisture as it softens in the marinade.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavour and gently tenderises the surface of the meat.

The step that matters

Overnight refrigeration with the mixture. Resting the roast in the marinade overnight lets the acid, aromatics and salt penetrate the surface and season the meat more evenly before it is cooked.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, pepper, lemon, parsley, beef):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, pepper, lemon, parsley, beef. 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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