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Larded Fillet of Beef with Truffles

A fillet of beef larded with truffles, baked with salt pork, served with brown mushroom sauce, flageolets, and buttered carrots.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Larded Fillet of Beef with Truffles

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the beef

  1. Wipe the fillet of beef and remove any fat, veins, and tendinous portions.

  2. Lard the upper side of the fillet with the grain of the meat and insert small pieces of truffle between the lardons using a sharp knife.

Roast

  1. Place the meat on a rack in a small dripping pan, sprinkle with coarse sea salt, and dredge with flour.

  2. Add the slices of fat salt pork to the pan.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 35 minutes, basting three times with the fat in the pan.

Serve

  1. Remove to a hot serving dish and pour around brown mushroom sauce.

  2. Serve with flageolets and buttered carrots.

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. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  2. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Truffle + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Pork + mushroomtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).

  5. Mushroom + carrottop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,796 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Fillet of beef
Lean, tender meat that is the main cut and is cooked whole in the oven.
Truffle
Adds a strong earthy aroma that spreads through the meat as it roasts.
Fat salt pork
Its melting fat bastes the beef and keeps the surface moist and flavourful as it cooks.
Flour
Dusted on the surface, it helps form a light crust and encourages browning.

The step that matters

Basting with the pan fat. Spooning the hot fat over the meat three times keeps the surface moist and promotes even browning, so the fillet does not dry out during the 35 minutes in the oven.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, truffle, flour, pork, mushroom, sauce):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, truffle, flour, pork, mushroom, sauce. 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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