Name: On Roastinq Meat
Ingredients: meat; ½ cup flour; 1 to 1½ cups water; coarse sea salt

Why it works: Meat and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 28% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,529 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

On Roastinq Meat

Ingredients

meat
½ cup flour
1 to 1½ cups water
coarse sea salt

Directions

Prepare and start roasting

Flour the meat well and place it in a roaster with water.
Position the bony side of the meat facing the fire, keeping it at a distance.

Roast and finish

Allow 15 minutes of cooking time per pound of meat in warm weather, and 20 minutes in winter.
Turn the meat often and move it closer to the fire once all parts are slightly cooked.
Flour the meat again when it is about half done.
Baste the meat frequently and salt it 30 minutes 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.

Meat + flourtop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together5,529 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

Meat: Provides the main protein that cooks through and browns during roasting.
Flour: Forms a coating that helps the outside of the meat brown.

“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.