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Roast Beef

Roast beef seasoned with flour, salt, pepper, Worcestershire sauce, and ketchup, baked until desired doneness.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Roast Beef

Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

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

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Dredge the beef lightly with flour and season with salt and pepper.

Roast and serve

  1. Place the beef in the oven and baste frequently while roasting.

  2. Roast for 15 minutes per pound for rare, longer for well done.

  3. Serve with a sauce made from the drippings, Worcestershire sauce, and tomato ketchup.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Beef + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Main protein; roasting sets its texture and browns its surface.
Flour
Dredging helps the surface brown and thickens the drippings for the sauce.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savory, tangy depth to the sauce made from the drippings.
Tomato ketchup
Adds sweetness and body to the sauce made from the drippings.

The step that matters

Roasting time. Lean beef dries out and toughens when overcooked, so cooking by weight and checking doneness helps keep it juicy. Basting keeps the surface moist as it roasts.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, pepper, sauce, ketchup. 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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