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Pot Roast of Beef

A slow‑cooked beef roast with vegetables simmered in water, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Pot Roast of Beef

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Pot Roast of Beef

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Weigh the meat and wipe it with a damp cloth.

  2. Sear and brown the meat in a hot, greased frying pan or kettle.

Braise

  1. Place the meat in a deep kettle on a trivet.

  2. Surround the meat with boiling water and cubed vegetables.

  3. Cover tightly and cook below boiling point until the meat is tender.

  4. Add hot water as needed and season when partly cooked.

Serve

  1. Place the meat on a platter and arrange the vegetables around it.

  2. Serve with brown gravy.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef roast
Tough cut that becomes tender and flavorful through long, slow moist cooking.
Cubed vegetables
Release sugars and aroma into the cooking liquid, flavoring the gravy and softening as they cook.

The step that matters

Cover tightly and cook below boiling point. Gentle, moist heat breaks down the tough connective tissue in the meat. Boiling would toughen the muscle fibers and dry the roast, so keep the liquid at a low simmer and the lid sealed.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, celery, turnip, pepper):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, celery, turnip, pepper. 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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