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To Cook a Fillet of Beef

A fillet of beef cooked in an oven with pork, suet, salt, pepper, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

To Cook a Fillet of Beef

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Place chopped pork and beef suet in a small baking pan.

  3. Sprinkle the fillet with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  4. Place the fillet in the pan.

Roast

  1. Add a large ladleful of hot stock to the bottom of the pan, or baste with boiling water.

  2. Cook the beef in the hot oven for half an hour before dinner, basting often and adding more hot stock if needed.

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 + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  3. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 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 fillet
Forms the main meat, cooking to a tender, juicy centre when roasted quickly.
Beef suet
Adds fat that bastes the meat and carries flavour during roasting.
Chopped pork
Adds fat and savoury flavour that drips into the pan and enriches the juices.
Hot stock
Provides moisture and body to the pan juices, helping prevent the meat from drying out.

The step that matters

Basting during roasting. The fillet is lean and cooks quickly in a hot oven, so it can dry out at the surface. Regular basting with the pan liquid keeps the outside moist and adds flavour, which is why the record asks for it often.

“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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