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Recooking Beef

A dish of reheated roast beef served with gravy, potatoes, bread crumbs, or rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 851 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Recooking Beef

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Heat the gravy in a pan.

  2. Trim the roast beef into shape.

  3. Cover the trimmed roast beef closely.

  4. Place the roast in the hot gravy for 10 minutes or less, depending on size.

  5. Cut the beef into slices.

  6. Heat the sliced beef in the gravy until warmed through.

Make the cakes

  1. Mix chopped beef with potatoes, bread crumbs, or rice.

  2. Add salt, pepper, and enough water or soup to make it moist.

  3. Heat butter or beef fat in a skillet until hot.

  4. Add the mixture to the skillet.

  5. Cover and steam until heated.

  6. Uncover to let it dry out and form a brown crust.

  7. Form the mixture into small cakes.

  8. Dust the cakes with flour.

  9. Fry the cakes in beef dripping until browned.

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. Potato + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together851 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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

Roast beef
Provides the main meat, which is cooked gently in gravy and then shaped into cakes.
Gravy
Keeps the sliced beef moist and adds savory flavor while it reheats.
Chopped or mashed potatoes
Adds starch and body, helping the mixture hold together as cakes.
Bread crumbs
Absorbs moisture and helps bind the mixture into cakes.
Flour
Dusted on the cakes, it helps them brown and form a crisp surface.

The step that matters

Uncover to let it dry out and form a brown crust. Steaming keeps the cakes moist, so they must be uncovered to let surface moisture evaporate. Otherwise the cakes stay pale and soft instead of browning in the fat.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, bread, rice, pepper, butter, flour):

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, rice, pepper, butter, 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.

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