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Boiled Roast

A roast boiled with lard or suet, seasoned with salt, pepper, allspice, and served with sweet potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,395 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Boiled Roast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the roast

  1. Place the roast in an aluminum steamer kettle with melted lard or suet to prevent sticking.

  2. Season the roast with salt, pepper, and allspice.

  3. Brown the roast on both sides.

Boil and steam

  1. Pour enough boiling water over the roast to cook it through.

  2. Peel and slice the sweet potatoes, season with salt and pepper, and place them in the steamer.

  3. Steam the sweet potatoes over the roast for about 30 minutes, keeping the kettle tightly covered.

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. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + sweet potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together105 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

  3. Pepper + sweet potatotop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Roast
Forms the main protein; browning and gentle boiling cook it through with moist heat.
Lard or suet
Coats the kettle to prevent sticking and adds fat for browning the roast.
Allspice
Adds aromatic, warm flavor to the outside of the roast.
Sweet potatoes
Steam in the kettle until tender, absorbing flavor and moisture from the roast.

The step that matters

Keep the kettle tightly covered while steaming. A tight lid traps steam so the sweet potatoes cook evenly in moist heat. Lifting the lid lets steam escape, lowering and uneven the temperature and slowing cooking.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Sweet potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, allspice. 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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