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Boast Beef

Roast Beef is a cooked beef joint roasted with salt and served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,677 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Boast Beef

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure. The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Wash the beef joint and dry it.

  2. Place it on a pan, fat and skin side up.

Roast

  1. Roast in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C).

  2. Baste with the fat every 10-15 minutes.

  3. When nearly done, sprinkle with salt and baste again.

  4. Prepare a warm platter for serving.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Drain excess grease, keeping the brown juice in the pan.

  2. Add ½ cup of water to the pan and bring to a boil.

  3. For made gravy, add more water and a little flour.

  4. Pour the gravy over the meat when serving.

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. Beef + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Beef and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,677 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Beef joint
Provides the meat that is roasted and carved, with fat that bastes it as it cooks.
Flour
Thickens the pan juices into a thicker gravy when added for made gravy.

“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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