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Roast Beef Seasoned

Seasoned roast beef cooked with salt, pepper, sage, bay leaves, mace, onion, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Roast Beef Seasoned

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Sprinkle salt, pepper, sage, bay leaves, mace, and onion slices in the bottom of the roaster.

  3. Place the roast in the roaster and season it with salt and pepper.

  4. Pour ½ cup of water around the roast, adding more as it boils away.

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 + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Sage + oniontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Sage + macetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together519 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Cross rib roast
Provides the main meat; its fat and connective tissue soften during slow roasting for tenderness.
Sage
Adds a savory, herbal aroma that flavors the meat as it roasts.
Bay leaves
Release a subtle aromatic flavor into the meat and drippings during roasting.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavor to the roast.
Onion
Its slices flavor the drippings and pan juices as they cook.

The step that matters

Keep water in the roaster. Adding water as it evaporates keeps the pan from drying out and the drippings from scorching, so the juices stay usable for the roast.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, sage, onion. 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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