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Basting Roast Meat

A method of basting roast meat with various ingredients depending on the type of meat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Biscuit and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 889 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Basting Roast Meat

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the oven

  1. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

Baste the meat

  1. Baste the roast meat every 10 minutes with its own drippings.

  2. For veal and poultry, add butter or suet to the basting.

  3. For mutton and lamb, use claret, sweet herbs, and butter.

  4. For pig, use cream and melted butter.

  5. For white meats, mix yolk of eggs, grated biscuits, and orange juice for basting.

Brown and serve

  1. To brown the meat, increase the fire when half done or add a glaze.

  2. Dredge the joint lightly with flour and baste with butter to froth it.

  3. Stir the fire and after 3 minutes, remove and serve the meat.

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. Biscuit + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together889 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Biscuit + orangetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together371 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Meat + biscuittop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together159 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Roast meat
Is the joint being cooked, and the basting liquids are applied directly to its surface.
Drippings
Moisten the surface and carry meat flavour back onto the roast during basting.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the surface and helps it froth and brown.
Flour
Lightly dredged onto the joint to help form a golden, slightly crisp surface.
Yolk of eggs
Adds fat and protein to the basting mixture, helping it set and brown on the meat.
Claret
Adds acidity and aromatic flavour to the basting liquid for mutton and lamb.

The step that matters

Browning the meat. Browning depends on surface heat and sugars and proteins reacting; if the fire is not raised or the surface is too wet, the meat stays pale and steams instead of browning.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, butter, egg, biscuit, flour):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, butter, egg, biscuit, flour. 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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