Why it works: Meat and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 28% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,529 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Roasting Meat
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the meat
Hang the meat so the thickest part receives the strongest heat, but not too close to avoid scorching.
Melt a little clean dripping in the dripping pan and baste the meat immediately.
Continue to baste every 15 minutes until 30 minutes before it is done.
Finish and roast
Remove the meat from the heat, clean the dripping pan, and stir the fire to make it burn fiercely.
Baste the meat well, sprinkle with coarse sea salt, and dredge with flour.
Return the meat to the heat and roast until browned and cooked through, avoiding basting for 15 minutes after flouring.
A 10-pound sirloin takes about 2.5 hours to roast, longer in cold weather.
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.
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Meat + flourtop 28% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together5,529 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Meat
- Provides the main body of the dish; roasting at high heat browns its surface and cooks the interior.
- Clean dripping
- Adds fat for basting, keeping the surface moist and helping it brown evenly.
- Flour
- Dredged over the meat to form a crust that helps it brown and hold juices.
The step that matters
Avoiding basting after flouring. Basting for 15 minutes after the flour is applied would wet the coating and soften the crust, so the meat should roast undisturbed to brown properly.
“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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