Why it works: Meat and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 28% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,529 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Pot Roast
Ingredients
Directions
Braise
Place the meat in a pot and cover it with enough water to boil for 3 hours.
As the water boils off, the fat from the meat will brown it; turn the meat a few times until browned.
Add coarse sea salt to the meat 1 hour before it is done.
Make the gravy
After removing the meat, add some water to the pot and stir in a little flour to make gravy; season to taste.
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.
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Meat + flourtop 28% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together5,529 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
- Meat with fat and bone
- Its fat renders and browns the surface, and the bone adds body and flavour to the cooking liquid.
- Flour
- Thickens the pot liquid into gravy as it is stirred in and heated.
The step that matters
Turning the meat as the water boils off. Once the water evaporates, the exposed surface can scorch before it browns evenly. Turning the meat exposes each side to the rendered fat so it browns rather than burns.
“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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