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Cold Roast Beef, Broiled

Cold roast beef slices marinated in oil and vinegar, then broiled and served with optional garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Cold Roast Beef, Broiled

Ingredients

Directions

Marinate

  1. Lay the beef slices on a plate with salad oil and vinegar for 30 minutes.

  2. Use 3 tablespoons of oil for every tablespoon of vinegar.

  3. Dust the meat with pepper and turn the slices after 30 minutes.

Broil

  1. Broil the beef over a hot fire for 1 hour without wiping off the oil and vinegar.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately, seasoning with butter, salt, and pepper as desired.

  2. Garnish with lemon, parsley, or watercress, or serve with sliced tomatoes or cucumbers.

  3. Serve freshly grated horseradish dressed with vinegar and salt 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Beef + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Lemon + horseradishtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 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

Rare roast beef
Forms the main body of the dish and carries the flavour of the marinade and browning.
Salad oil
Adds moisture and fat that keep the surface of the thin slices from drying during broiling.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the flavour of the beef.

The step that matters

Broiling without wiping off the oil and vinegar. The oil and vinegar left on the slices keep the surface moist and flavourful while it browns. Thin slices held over a hot fire for a long time can dry out, so the coating matters.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, vinegar, pepper, butter, tomato, horseradish):

  1. Avocadofits about as well
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Cherryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, vinegar, pepper, butter, tomato, horseradish. 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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