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Breakfast Dish of Beef

Slices of cold roast beef steamed in a gravy mixture of stock, vinegar, butter, ketchup, and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Breakfast Dish of Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Mix the gravy or beef stock with vinegar, melted butter, ketchup, currant jelly, salt, and pepper.

Steam the beef

  1. Place the mixture over the slices of meat in a basin or pot.

  2. Put the basin or pot inside another pot filled with boiling water.

  3. Cover closely and steam for 30 minutes.

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. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  2. Vinegar + curranttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together693 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender as it steams in the sauce.
Gravy or beef stock
Provides the liquid base that carries the flavour and keeps the meat moist.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Cover closely and steam. The lid must seal well so steam stays trapped around the meat. Steam heats the beef gently and keeps it moist, while loss of steam would let the sauce reduce and the meat dry out.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, vinegar, butter, ketchup, pepper):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Red currantfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, vinegar, butter, ketchup, pepper. 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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