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Roast Meat

A simple roast meat cooked with water, salt, pepper, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Meat and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,594 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Roast Meat

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cover the meat with a pan of the same size.

  2. Add enough water to cook the meat until tender.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, and butter.

  4. When the meat is nearly done, remove the cover and brown well.

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. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,777 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Meat
The main ingredient; slow, covered cooking in liquid makes it tender, and the final uncovered stage browns its surface.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the surface brown and taste savory.

The step that matters

Remove the cover to brown at the end. Steam from the covered pan keeps the surface moist and pale. Uncovering near the end lets the surface dry out, so browning reactions can develop color and flavor. Leaving the cover on too long leaves the meat pale.

“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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