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Beef Roast

A roasted beef prepared with drippings, salt, onions, garlic, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Beef Roast

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Heat beef drippings in a pan on the stove.

  2. Rub coarse sea salt on both sides of the beef.

  3. Add the beef to the drippings with sliced onions and garlic.

Sear and roast

  1. Fry the beef on both sides, keeping the pan covered.

  2. Transfer the beef to an oven at 350°F (175°C).

  3. Pour gravy over the beef every 10 minutes, keeping it covered.

  4. Roast for nearly 3 hours.

  5. Remove the beef from the oven.

Finish the gravy

  1. Sprinkle flour into the gravy to thicken.

  2. If necessary, add a little hot water.

  3. Boil for a few minutes.

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 + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Beef + garlictop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender during long, slow roasting.
Beef drippings
Adds fat for frying the beef, carrying flavor and promoting browning on the surface.
Flour (in the method)
Thickens the gravy as it heats, giving it body and a smoother texture.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook in the drippings, adding flavor to the gravy.
Garlic
Adds aroma and savory depth to the drippings and gravy as it cooks.

The step that matters

Sprinkle flour into the gravy to thicken. Flour clumps if dropped in dry or added to very hot liquid without stirring. Whisking it in gradually lets its starch hydrate evenly and thicken the gravy smoothly.

“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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