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Sour Roast

A beef roast stewed with onions, spices, vinegar, and raisins, served with a sour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Sour Roast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Tie the fillet neatly.

  2. Heat the butter or dripping in a stewpan.

  3. Brown the fillet.

Stew

  1. Add the chopped onions.

  2. Tie the spices, peppercorns, and cloves in muslin.

  3. Add the vinegar, water, sugar, onions, and meat back into the stewpan.

  4. Stew gently for 4 to 5 hours.

  5. Add the raisins an hour before the roast is ready.

Finish and serve

  1. When ready, place the meat (untied) on a hot dish.

  2. Boil the gravy, removing the spices and peppercorns.

  3. Pour the gravy around the meat.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Clove + raisintop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Allspice + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  5. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Fillet of beef
Forms the main body of the roast, which becomes tender during long gentle stewing.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and body to the gravy as they soften during stewing.
Vinegar
Adds the sharp, sour acidity that gives this roast its character.
Raisins
Add sweetness that balances the sourness of the vinegar in the gravy.
Butter or dripping
Carries heat for browning the fillet and adds richness to the dish.

The step that matters

Brown the fillet. Browning creates flavourful Maillard compounds on the meat surface, which deepen the colour and taste of the gravy as the roast stews.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, butter, onion, clove, allspice, vinegar, sugar):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Plumfits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, onion, clove, allspice, vinegar, sugar. 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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