Skip to main content
Main

Beef Pot Roast

A slow-cooked beef shoulder braised in tomatoes with fat trimmings and garlic.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Garlic and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,076 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Beef Pot Roast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wipe the beef with a clean wet cloth and dredge heavily with flour.

  2. In a frying pan, fry the fat trimmings until browned, then add the garlic and fry until brown; remove garlic.

  3. Sear the meat in the pan, turning until all surfaces are browned.

Braise and serve

  1. Pour the tomatoes over the meat and place it over low heat, just below boiling.

  2. Turn the meat occasionally and add a little water if necessary to prevent burning.

  3. Keep covered and cook until very tender, but do not let it break.

  4. After the first half hour, add salt and pepper to taste.

  5. When done, remove the meat, make gravy, and serve hot.

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. Garlic + tomatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Tomato + peppertop 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. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

  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

Beef shoulder with round bone
Slow braising breaks down connective tissue, making the meat tender and rich.
Flour
Dredging coats the surface, helping it brown well and thickening the later gravy.
Tomatoes
Provide liquid and acidity that moisten the meat and build the sauce as it cooks.
Fat trimmings
Rendered fat adds flavor and helps sear the meat and garlic.

The step that matters

Keep the heat low and the pot covered. Just-below-boiling heat lets collagen in the tough shoulder slowly soften without the meat tightening or the liquid reducing and scorching. Boiling hard would toughen the fibers and break the meat apart.

Swap the garlic

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

  1. Oreganofits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, tomato, 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipes