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A joint of meat roasted and basted with butter or dripping, seasoned with fine salt and coated with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Modern Cookery

Ingredients

Directions

Roast

  1. Spit the joint and place it far from the fire.

  2. Baste constantly until it is two-thirds done.

  3. Move it closer to the fire to brown properly, avoiding burning.

Season and finish

  1. A few minutes before serving, sprinkle with fine salt and baste with dripping or butter.

  2. Dredge with flour to form a crust and retain juices.

  3. If wrapped in buttered paper, do not flour until 15-20 minutes before serving.

  4. Keep the dripping-pan clean and draw it back when stirring the fire.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Meat + flourtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,529 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Joint of meat
Is the main cut that is cooked slowly and browned on the outside.
Butter or its own dripping
Basting fat that carries heat over the surface, adds moisture and promotes browning and flavour.
Flour
Dredged on the surface to form a crust that helps hold in juices.

The step that matters

Move it closer to the fire to brown properly, avoiding burning.. Browning depends on surface heat reacting the meat's proteins and sugars, but at too high a heat the outside scorches before the centre is cooked. Moving the joint in gradually, while basting, gives colour without burning.

“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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