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Pot Roast of Coarse Beef

A pot roast made from coarse lean beef, fat salt pork, onions, tomatoes, carrot, turnip, simmered and served with a browned flour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Pot Roast of Coarse Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Sear and simmer

  1. Cut the beef into one piece.

  2. Fry the fat salt pork in a shallow pot.

  3. Add the beef and cook fast on both sides for 5 minutes.

  4. Cover the beef with chopped onion, canned tomatoes, sliced carrot, and sliced turnip.

  5. Pour in enough hot water to come halfway up the meat.

  6. Cover and simmer slowly for 2 hours, turning the meat after 1 hour.

Finish the meat

  1. Remove the beef.

  2. Rub the beef with butter, pepper, and salt.

  3. Place the beef in the oven.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Skim the gravy.

  2. Strain the gravy, rubbing the vegetables through a colander.

  3. Return the gravy to the pot.

  4. Thicken the gravy with browned flour.

  5. Boil the gravy once.

  6. Pour half of the gravy over the meat.

  7. Serve the rest of the gravy in a gravy boat.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  3. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 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
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender through slow, moist simmering.
Fat salt pork
Renders fat into the pot, adding richness and flavor for searing the beef.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and body to the gravy as it cooks down.
Canned tomatoes
Contributes acidity and savory depth to the braising liquid and gravy.
Browned flour
Thickens the gravy and adds a toasted, nutty flavor.

The step that matters

Cook fast on both sides for 5 minutes. A hot sear browns the meat surface through the Maillard reaction, building deep flavor. Searing too gently or too briefly leaves the meat pale and less flavorful in the finished gravy.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pork, onion, tomato, carrot, butter, pepper):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Okrafits about as well
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, onion, tomato, carrot, butter, 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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