Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓
Pot Roast
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Fry the salt pork in an iron pot for a few minutes.
Season the beef and sprinkle with flour.
Add the beef to the pot and brown on all sides.
Braise and serve
Pour in hot water to half cover the beef.
Cover tightly and cook until tender, adding boiling water as needed to prevent burning.
Thicken the gravy and pour it around the meat on the platter.
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.
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Beef + porktop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together5,690 recipes
Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).
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Beef + flourtop 25% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together10,677 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Pork + flourtop 27% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together11,187 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Beef and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,677 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Beef
- Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender with slow, covered cooking.
- Salt pork
- Renders fat into the pot, adding richness and flavor for browning the beef.
- Flour
- Coats the beef and thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy.
The step that matters
Cover tightly and cook until tender, adding boiling water as needed. Slow, covered cooking breaks down the tough connective tissue in lean beef. If the liquid cooks off, the meat can scorch on the bottom of the pot, so boiling water should be added to keep enough liquid in the pot.
“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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