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SrrLoin of Beer

A roasted sirloin of beef cooked over a clear fire, basted with dripping, butter, and flour, served with horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Horse and radish work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 529 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyraldehyde, which smells malty, chocolate. The science ↓

SrrLoin of Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare a clear fire for roasting.

Roast the beef

  1. Place the beef 10 inches from the fire and gradually move it closer.

  2. Add a little dripping to the dripping pan and cover it with paper.

  3. Baste the meat immediately and every 15 minutes while roasting.

  4. In the last 30 minutes, remove the paper, sprinkle salt, baste with butter, and dredge with flour.

Serve

  1. Serve with scraped 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. Horse + radishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together529 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  2. Beef + horsetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Flour + radishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together119 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

Sirloin of beef
The main cut; its size and fat content set the cooking time and juiciness.
Dripping
Fat for basting that adds moisture and helps the surface brown.
Butter
Basting fat that adds richness and promotes golden browning on the crust.
Flour
Dredged over the surface to help form a crisp, browned crust.

The step that matters

Basting during roasting. Basting every 15 minutes keeps the surface moist and coated in fat, which supports even browning and reduces drying of the outer layers of the beef.

Swap the radish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, butter, flour, horse):

  1. Radishthe original
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Mustardfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, flour, horse. 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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