Name: Roast Beef
Ingredients: 8 lbs sirloin beef; coarse sea salt; water; cream or lard for gravy

Why it works: Beef and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,128 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Roast Beef

Ingredients

8 lbs sirloin beef
coarse sea salt
water
cream or lard for gravy

Directions

Prepare the fire

Preheat the fire until bright and clear, but not scorching.

Roast

Place the beef about 10 inches from the fire and gradually move it closer.
Baste the beef with a mixture of salt and water in the dripping pan before using its own drippings.
Once almost done, sprinkle the beef with salt.
Baste often while roasting, using cream or lard for gravy.
Roast for 1.5 to 2 hours.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Beef + creamtop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,128 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Sirloin beef: Is the main cut that is roasted, with its own drippings used for basting and gravy.
Coarse sea salt: Seasons the beef at the end of roasting and is also mixed with water for early basting.
Cream or lard: Is used with the drippings to baste the beef and make the gravy.

“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.