Name: Shaped Cold Roast Beef
Ingredients: ½ lb cold minced beef; 1 cup chopped suet; 1 cup bread crumbs; 2 eggs; pepper to taste; coarse sea salt to taste; a little savory; a little stock or milk

Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Shaped Cold Roast Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

In a bowl, mix the minced beef, chopped suet, bread crumbs, eggs, pepper, salt, and savory.
Moisten the mixture with a little stock or milk.
Turn the mixture into a buttered mold lined with brown bread crumbs.

Steam and serve

Cover the mold and steam for 1.5 hours.
Turn out onto a platter and serve with gravy.

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.

Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,971 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,759 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).
Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,032 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs: Bind the mixture so the loaf holds its shape when sliced.
Bread crumbs: Absorb moisture and add body, keeping the loaf tender rather than dense.
Chopped suet: Adds fat that keeps the lean meat moist during steaming.
Minced beef: Provides the main meaty structure and flavour of the loaf.

“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.