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Cold Roast Beef, Broiled

Cold roast beef served cold, lightly seasoned, and briefly broiled before serving.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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 ↓

Cold Roast Beef, Broiled

Ingredients

Directions

Marinate

  1. Lay the beef slices on a plate with enough salad oil and vinegar to moisten them, using 1 tablespoon of vinegar for every 3 tablespoons of oil.

  2. Dust the meat with pepper and turn the slices after 30 minutes.

Broil and serve

  1. After 1 hour, broil the beef over a hot fire without wiping off the oil and vinegar. Broil quickly and serve immediately.

  2. Season with butter, coarse sea salt, and pepper if desired.

  3. Garnish with lemon, parsley, or watercress, or serve with sliced fresh tomatoes or cucumbers.

  4. Serve freshly grated horseradish dressed with vinegar and salt alongside.

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

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

  2. Parsley + watercresstop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together469 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Lemon + watercresstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together579 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rare roast beef
Provides the meat itself, which is cooked briefly so it stays tender and juicy inside.
Salad oil
Coats the slices to add moisture and carry flavor, and helps them brown under the broiler.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the beef and moistens the surface before broiling.

The step that matters

Broil quickly over a hot fire. The beef is already cooked, so brief high heat only browns the surface. Longer heat dries the slices and turns them tough and grey.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, vinegar, pepper, butter, parsley, watercress, tomato):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Avocadofits about as well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, vinegar, pepper, butter, parsley, watercress, tomato. 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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