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How to Prepare Roast Beef

Roast beef prepared with onions, herbs, and a gravy made from pan drippings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and thyme are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,585 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

How to Prepare 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 the roast

  1. Have your butcher remove the bone and excess fat from the roast, then tie it into a circular shape with skewers.

  2. Lard the roast with thin strips of bacon.

  3. Place the roast in a roasting pan with the quartered onions, inserting a clove into each onion, and add the bay leaf.

  4. Sprinkle the roast with salt, pepper, thyme, and dredge with flour.

  5. Add 2 to 3 cups of stock to the pan.

Roast

  1. Roast in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C), basting often for juiciness.

  2. When browned on top, turn the roast bottom side up and brown that side as well.

  3. Roast for about 2 hours until nicely browned and rare at the center.

  4. Transfer the roast to a heated platter and keep warm in the oven.

Make the gravy

  1. To make the gravy, remove excess fat from the pan drippings.

  2. Mix 1 tablespoon of flour with cold water until smooth, then add to the pan drippings.

  3. Place on the stove, add a little salt, and boil while stirring until thickened.

  4. Serve the gravy with the roast.

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. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Thyme + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 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

Porterhouse roast
Forms the main body of the dish and provides the meat that is browned and served.
Bacon (in the method)
Adds fat and savory flavor as it melts into the lean meat during roasting.
Stock
Forms the liquid in the pan that helps build the drippings used for the gravy.
Flour
Dredged on the roast to promote browning and to thicken the gravy.

The step that matters

Basting and turning the roast. Basting keeps the surface moist so it browns evenly rather than drying out, and turning the roast to brown the underside promotes even browning. Overcooking past rare dries the meat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, thyme, flour):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, thyme, 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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