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Roast Beef

A large sirloin roast cooked in the oven, basted with drippings and butter, served with optional horseradish, catsup, or Worcestershire sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Roast Beef

Why it works: Beef and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. 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.

Roast the beef

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

  2. Place a little drippings in the roasting pan.

  3. Cover the fatty parts of the beef with paper to prevent overcooking.

  4. Baste the beef with drippings every 15 minutes until nearly done.

  5. Sprinkle coarse sea salt over the beef, baste with butter, and dredge with flour.

Make the gravy

  1. Once done, remove the beef and use the drippings to make brown gravy by adding hot water and thickening with flour.

  2. Season the gravy with chopped parsley if desired.

Serve

  1. Serve with horseradish, tomato catsup, mushroom catsup, or Worcestershire sauce.

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. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Parsley + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Tomato + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Beef + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 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 beef
The main cut, which cooks slowly and is the centre of the dish.
Drippings
Add moisture and savoury flavour when basted over the meat and used in the gravy.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the surface brown and taste rich.
Flour
Coats the surface and thickens the gravy into a smooth, body-rich sauce.

The step that matters

Basting every 15 minutes. Spooning drippings over the meat keeps the surface moist and helps it brown evenly. Letting the surface dry out or skipping basts can leave the outside tough and dark while the inside cooks unevenly.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, butter, flour, horseradish, tomato, mushroom, sauce):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Garlicfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, flour, horseradish, tomato, mushroom, sauce. 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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