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Roast. Sirloin, Ribs, or Round of Beef

A method for roasting a beef joint, optionally using dripping, flour, and seasonings, with cooking times based on weight.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Port wine and venison work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 239 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Roast. Sirloin, Ribs, or Round of Beef

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Grease the beef joint with dripping if desired.

  3. Place the joint in a paper bag without seasoning.

Roast

  1. Put the bagged joint on a grid in the oven.

  2. Cook for 45 minutes per 3 pounds of beef, adjusting time for larger joints.

  3. For a thick gravy, roll the joint in flour before placing it in the bag.

Venison

  1. For venison, trim skin and nerves, roll in flour, cover with fat, and season.

  2. Seal the venison joint in a bag and cook for 1.25 hours per 3 pounds.

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. Port wine + venisontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together239 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Beef + port winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together626 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Ham + venisontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Beef + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,729 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Beef + venisontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together292 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef joint
The main cut, whose fat and protein give the roast its flavour and firm, sliceable texture.
Flour
Rolled onto the joint, it thickens the meat juices into a thicker gravy.
Dripping
Fat rubbed on the joint that helps the surface brown and adds savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Weighing the joint before cooking. Cooking time is set by weight, so an underestimated weight leaves the centre of a large joint underdone. Heat needs time to travel from the surface to the middle, so a bigger joint needs proportionally longer at low heat.

“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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