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Boast Sirloin of Beef

A large roast of sirloin beef cooked slowly in the oven, basted with fat, finished with flour and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 743 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Boast Sirloin of 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

  1. Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Place the sirloin 18 inches from the heat source.

  3. Roast for about 2 hours and 30 minutes, basting frequently with fat from the dripping pan.

  4. A quarter hour before it's done, sprinkle flour over the beef.

Finish and serve

  1. Once removed from the oven, pour over gravy or hot water with brown coloring.

  2. Serve with scraped horseradish or horseradish sauce and Yorkshire pudding on the side.

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. Flour + horseradishtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together743 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Beef + horseradishtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together491 recipes

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

  3. Beef + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Beef and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,677 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
Forms the main meat that is roasted and carved for serving.
Flour
Sprinkled on near the end to help form a thickened, browned crust on the beef.
Fat
Used for basting, adding moisture and richness to the surface as it roasts.
Gravy
Poured over after roasting to add moisture, savoury flavour and colour to the meat.

The step that matters

Basting with dripping fat. Regular basting spreads fat over the surface, keeping it moist and promoting even browning. Without it, the outer layer can dry out and brown unevenly before the interior is cooked.

Swap the horseradish

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour. 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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