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Rare Roast Beef

A large beef roast seasoned with salt and flour, roasted uncovered until rare.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,677 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Rare Roast Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub the roast with coarse sea salt and dredge with flour.

  2. Place the roast in a greased pan without a cover.

Roast

  1. Roast rapidly to keep the juices from running.

  2. Baste occasionally with the drippings.

  3. Turn the roast when half done, but do not pierce it with a fork.

  4. Only add water if the drippings are about to scorch, adding a few spoonfuls at a time.

  5. Roast for 15 minutes per pound, or about 1.5 hours for this size.

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 + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Beef and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,677 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

Beef roast
Forms the main body of the dish and supplies the meat, fat and juices.
Flour
Coats the surface, helping it brown and form a flavorful crust.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the outside of the roast and adds flavor to the crust.

The step that matters

Turn the roast when half done, but do not pierce it with a fork. Piercing the meat lets juices escape, which leaves the roast drier. Turning it by hand or with tongs keeps the juices inside, so the meat stays moister and more tender.

“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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