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Roast Beef

Roast Beef is a rib or loin roast seasoned with salt, pepper, butter, wine, and lemon juice, baked until browned.

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

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Roast Beef

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Season the roast thoroughly with salt and pepper.

  3. Place the roast in a roasting dish and baste it with melted butter.

Roast

  1. Roast in the oven, basting frequently with its own fat.

  2. If the gravy becomes too brown, add ⅓ cup of German cooking wine to the pan.

  3. Continue roasting for about 2 hours until browned outside but still a little red inside.

Finish and serve

  1. Skim off excess fat from the gravy, then pour it over the roast.

  2. Squeeze a little lemon juice over the roast before serving.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

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

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Pepper + winetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,066 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rib-piece or loin roast
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking into tender, juicy slices as it roasts.
Melted butter
Adds fat that coats the surface, promoting browning and a rich flavor.
German cooking wine
Thins and flavors the pan gravy when it has browned too much.

The step that matters

Continue roasting until browned outside but still a little red inside. Meat keeps cooking from residual heat after leaving the oven, and overcooking toughens muscle proteins and dries the meat. Checking doneness near the end helps keep it juicy.

“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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