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Sirloin of Beef En Epigram

Roasted sirloin served with a sauce of gravy, ketchup, onions, pickled cucumbers, and butter in flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 640 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Sirloin of Beef En Epigram

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Roast the sirloin of beef and remove it from the spit.

  2. Carefully peel off the skin and cut the lean part into pieces about the size of a coin.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the gravy, chopped onion, ketchup, pepper, salt, pickled cucumbers, and butter rolled in flour.

  2. Add the beef pieces to the pan and toss for five minutes.

Serve

  1. Place the beef back on the sirloin and cover with the skin.

  2. Serve garnished with horseradish.

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. Cucumber + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together640 recipes

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

  2. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Onion + cucumbertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sirloin of beef
Provides the meat that is roasted and then cut into pieces for the sauce.
Gravy
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries the other flavours.
Pickled cucumbers
Add sharp acidity that cuts through the richness of the beef and gravy.
Butter rolled in flour
Thickens the sauce and gives it a smooth, glossy body.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and aroma as it softens in the sauce.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and tang that rounds out the sauce.

The step that matters

Toss the beef in the sauce for five minutes. Tossing gently keeps the beef pieces tender and moist while they absorb flavour. Overcooking them in the sauce would toughen the lean meat and make it dry.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, ketchup, pepper, butter, flour, horseradish. 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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