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Pot Roast

A beef pot roast cooked with onion, butter, water, salt, pepper, and drippings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Pot Roast

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the beef

  1. Heat a little drippings in an iron kettle.

  2. Add the beef and brown it on all sides.

Build the braise

  1. Fry the chopped onion in butter until brown, then add to the kettle.

  2. Pour in enough boiled water to reach half the height of the meat.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, then cover tightly.

  4. Simmer for 2 to 3 hours, depending on the weight of the beef.

Serve

  1. Once done, remove the beef and pour the gravy over it 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.

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. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Main protein; slow simmering in liquid breaks down connective tissue until tender.
Onion
Frying until brown adds sweetness and savory depth to the gravy.
Butter
Fat used to brown the onion, carrying flavor into the braising liquid.
Drippings
Fat for searing the beef, building browned flavor on the kettle surface.

The step that matters

Browning the beef on all sides. Searing creates browned flavor through the Maillard reaction. Pale meat added to the liquid gives a flatter, less savory gravy. Brown each side well before adding liquid.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits about as well
  2. Onionthe original
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Tomatofits about as well

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