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Beef with Tomato Sauce

A simple dish of thinly sliced roast beef simmered in a tomato sauce with butter, onion, Worcestershire sauce, and Tabasco.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beef with Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a chafing dish and sauté the chopped onion until browned.

  2. Add the tomatoes, beef gravy, Worcestershire sauce, salt, pepper, and Tabasco sauce and bring to a boil.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the thinly sliced roast beef and heat until hot.

  2. Serve immediately.

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. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + beeftop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

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

  4. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  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
Provides the main protein; it is only warmed through in the sauce, so it stays tender.
Stewed or canned tomatoes
Supply the body, acidity and most of the sauce's liquid.
Beef gravy or stock
Adds savoury depth and extra liquid to the tomato base.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and flavour once softened and browned in butter.

The step that matters

Stir in the beef and heat until hot. The beef is already cooked, so it only needs to warm through. Prolonged boiling toughens thin slices and dries them out, so keep the heat gentle once it is added.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, tomato, beef, sauce, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Onionthe original
  4. Carrotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, tomato, beef, sauce, 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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