Skip to main content
Main

Roast Beef

A simple oven-roasted beef with salt, pepper, flour, water, optionally served with sage dressing or Yorkshire pudding.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Roast Beef

Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Roast Beef

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 your oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Season the roast with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  3. Spread a thick layer of flour over the top of the roast.

  4. Place the roast in a tight baking dish with 1 pint of water.

Roast

  1. Do not remove the cover except to add sage dressing or Yorkshire pudding in the last hour.

  2. Roast for three hours.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  3. Flour + sagetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Beef + sagetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together847 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Roast beef
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and juicy during long, gentle roasting.
Flour
Forms a crust over the top of the roast that helps seal in moisture and encourages browning.

The step that matters

Keep the cover on during roasting. Keeping the dish tightly covered traps steam with the water, so the roast cooks gently and stays moist. Lifting the cover early lets moisture escape and can dry the outside before the centre is tender.

Swap the sage

The recipe marks sage as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, flour):

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Jalapenofits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Sagethe original

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

More roast beef recipes

Cold Fricassee 21Fillet 16with Yorkshire Pudding 15Pie 14Steak 10Pot 9 See all 303 →

You might also like

Beef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipesBeef CroquettesBeef Croquettes58 recipes