Skip to main content
Main

Cold Roasted Beef, Different Modes of Dressing

Cold roasted beef sliced thin and dressed with a gravy made from bones, herbs, beer, vinegar, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Cold Roasted Beef, Different Modes of Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Cut the beef into very thin slices.

  2. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and a little ground allspice.

  3. Add a handful of chopped parsley and a finely shredded onion to the beef.

Make the gravy

  1. In a small saucepan, break the bones of the meat and add them with a chopped onion, carrot, thyme, and other herbs.

  2. Add water to the saucepan and simmer to make gravy.

  3. Strain the gravy into the saucepan with the beef, adding ½ cup of table beer and 1 tablespoon of vinegar.

  4. Simmer gently for 15 minutes, then stir in the beaten yolks of 2 eggs.

  5. Serve immediately.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Allspice + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Allspice + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold roasted beef
Forms the main body of the dish, carrying the seasoning and the gravy.
Eggs
Yolks beaten into the warm gravy thicken it gently and enrich its texture.
Table beer
Adds a light malty flavour and liquid to the gravy.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the gravy.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently but can scramble if the gravy boils. Simmer gently and stir the beaten yolks in steadily so the sauce becomes smooth rather than curdled.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, allspice, parsley, meat, carrot, thyme):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, allspice, parsley, meat, carrot, thyme. 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.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes