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Roast Sirloin of Beef

A large roast of sirloin beef cooked at 400°F, basted with fat, seasoned with salt and flour, served with gravy and horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 743 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Roast 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.

Roast the beef

  1. Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Place the sirloin 18 inches from the heat source.

  3. Roast for about 2.5 hours, basting frequently with fat from the dripping pan.

  4. A quarter hour before it is done, sprinkle salt and flour over the beef.

Finish and serve

  1. Once cooked, transfer to a dish and pour over gravy or hot water with brown coloring.

  2. Serve with scraped horseradish or horseradish sauce on the side.

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. Flour + horseradishtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together743 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Beef + horseradishtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together491 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  3. Beef + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,677 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

Sirloin of beef
Forms the main body of the dish, providing the meat that is roasted and served.
Flour
Dusted over the beef near the end, it helps form a light crust on the surface.
Gravy or hot water
Poured over the cooked beef, it adds moisture and liquid for the serving dish.
Horseradish
Served on the side, it adds sharp heat that contrasts with the rich beef.

The step that matters

Basting with dripping fat during roasting. Spooning rendered fat over the surface keeps the outer layer moist and helps it brown evenly. Basting too rarely lets the surface dry out and brown unevenly across a large cut of meat.

Swap the horseradish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, flour):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour. 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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