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Pot Roast

A pot roast made with beef, tomatoes, onion, and bay leaf, simmered until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dredge the meat with salt, pepper, and flour, then brown it in the drippings.

  2. Skin the tomatoes, cut them into quarters, and place them in a deep pot.

  3. Remove the meat from the drippings and lay it on top of the tomatoes.

  4. Cook the onion in the drippings, then add it along with the hot water and bay leaf to the pot.

Braise and serve

  1. Simmer, covered, until the meat is tender, adding a little water as needed.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Serve hot, with gravy thickened by mixing a little flour with cold water and stirring it into the tomato.

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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + beeftop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 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

Beef
Becomes tender through slow simmering, giving the dish its main body and substance.
Flour
Coats the meat so it browns, and later thickens the gravy.
Tomatoes
Provide moisture and acidity that build the sauce around the meat.
Drippings
Carry flavor into the browned meat and the onion.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Simmering until the meat is tender. Beef from tougher cuts needs long, gentle, covered simmering so connective tissue breaks down. Cooking too hard or too briefly leaves it chewy, and adding water as needed keeps the liquid from evaporating.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, beef, pepper, 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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