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To Roast a Sirloin of Beef

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

To Roast a Sirloin of 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.

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

  2. Sprinkle the sirloin with olive oil, coarse sea salt, and black pepper.

  3. Lay sliced onions and bay leaves over the sirloin and let it marinate for a few days.

  4. Roast the sirloin in the oven until cooked to your desired doneness.

  5. Serve the roast with horseradish and Yorkshire pudding or potato pudding.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Horseradish + potatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Olive + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,458 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

Swap the horseradish

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

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, olive, onion, potato. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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