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A Nice Way to Serve Cold Beef

A method for serving sliced cold roast beef with gravy or catsup, lemon slices, and optional leek and parsley, accompanied by potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 and place it in a dish.

  2. Cover the beef with gravy, catsup or wine, and lemon slices.

  3. If you don't have gravy, mix hot water, butter, and browned flour in a covered stew-pan.

Cook and serve

  1. Simmer gently for 30 minutes.

  2. Optionally, add sliced leek and chopped parsley to the beef.

  3. 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 until tender and warm.
Gravy
Supplies moisture and savory flavor that keeps the slices from drying out as they warm.
Catsup or wine
Adds acidity and sweetness that brighten the savory gravy and balance the beef's richness.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce, rounding out its flavor.
Browned flour
Thickens the sauce and adds a toasted, nutty depth of flavor.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 30 minutes. Keep the heat low and the pot covered so the beef warms through without boiling. High heat toughens meat proteins and can make the slices dry and stringy.

Swap the leek

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

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

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