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Roast Beef

A roasted sirloin roast served with a Worcestershire and ketchup gravy thickened with browned flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Roast Beef

Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Roast Beef

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Dredge the sirloin roast with flour and season with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

Roast

  1. Place the roast in the oven and baste it frequently while roasting.

  2. Roast for 15 minutes per pound for rare, longer for well done.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, collect the gravy from the dripping pan.

  2. Add Worcestershire sauce and tomato ketchup to the gravy.

  3. Thicken the gravy with browned flour and serve in a gravy boat.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sauce + tomatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Flour + saucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Sirloin roast
Provides the main body of meat, which is the centerpiece of the dish.
Flour
Forms a light coating on the roast that helps it brown during roasting.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savory, tangy depth to the pan drippings used for the gravy.
Tomato ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity that rounds out the flavor of the gravy.
Browned flour
Thickens the gravy and adds a toasty, nutty flavor.

The step that matters

Basting while roasting. Basting keeps the surface moist and helps the browning stay even, while the roast's internal temperature decides doneness. Timing by weight alone can miss the mark, so check the meat itself.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, pepper, sauce, ketchup):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, pepper, sauce, ketchup. 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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