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Roast Beef Chauffe

Roast beef slices served with a butter, currant jelly, cayenne, salt, and sherry sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Roast Beef Chauffe

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the beef into small slices, about ½ inch thick.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a chafing dish.

  2. Add the currant jelly, a dash of cayenne, a little salt, and the Sherry or Madeira to the melted butter.

Serve

  1. Add the beef slices to the mixture and 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. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  2. Currant + sherrytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Melts into the sauce, adding richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and body, thickening the sauce as it melts and glazes the beef.
Sherry or madeira
Adds acidity and aromatic depth that balances the sweet jelly and rich butter.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Plumfits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Grapefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, pepper, sherry. 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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