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Roast Beef with Sweet Potatoes

A roast beef served with sweet potatoes, butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 with Sweet Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Season the beef with salt and pepper.

  3. Slice the sweet potatoes in half.

Roast

  1. Place the beef and sweet potatoes in a roasting bag.

  2. Add the butter to the bag.

  3. Seal the bag and roast for 1 hour.

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. Sweet potato + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

  4. Beef + sweet potatotop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together145 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Sweet potato + buttertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,491 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Forms the main protein of the dish, providing the bulk of the meat and its savory flavor.
Sweet potatoes
Add natural sweetness and a soft, starchy texture as they cook in the bag.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavor and keeps the beef and potatoes moist during roasting.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Onionfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Sweet potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, 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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