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A Nice Way to Serve Cold Beef

Sliced cold roast beef served with gravy or butter and browned flour, optionally with lemon, leek, and parsley, accompanied by potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

A Nice Way to Serve Cold Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the cold roast beef.

Cook

  1. Cover the beef with gravy, or use hot water and butter with browned flour.

  2. Place in a covered stew-pan and simmer gently for 30 minutes.

  3. If desired, add sliced leek and chopped parsley before serving.

Serve

  1. Serve with boiled or mashed potatoes and dessert.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Leek + parsleytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together759 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Parsley + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  4. Leek + potatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Lemon + leektop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together162 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold roast beef
Is the main protein, gently reheated in the sauce so it stays moist and tender.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded flavour to the sauce.
Browned flour
Thickens the liquid and adds a toasted, nutty colour and flavour to the gravy.
Catsup or wine
Adds acidity and savoury depth that brightens the gravy.

The step that matters

Simmering gently in a covered pan. Boiling vigorously toughens cooked meat and can make the gravy break or thicken unevenly. A gentle, covered simmer heats the beef through while keeping it juicy and the sauce smooth.

Swap the leek

The recipe marks leek as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, butter, flour, wine, lemon, parsley, potato):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Leekthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, flour, wine, lemon, parsley, potato. 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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