Name: Fillet of Beef
Ingredients: 1 fillet of beef; Fat (for brushing); Several pieces of salt pork; Butter (for basting); Pepper (to taste); Coarse sea salt (to taste); Mushroom sauce (for serving)

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 ↓

Fillet of Beef

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

Remove the fat from the top of the fillet of beef.
Ask your butcher to cut the fillet for you.
Brush the top of the fillet with fat.

Roast

Place several pieces of salt pork in the bottom of a baking dish.
Lay the fillet on top of the salt pork.
Baste the fillet with butter, pepper, and salt.
Cook in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for thirty-five minutes.

Serve

Serve with mushroom sauce.

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.

Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,690 recipes

Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).
Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,232 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Pork + mushroomtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,875 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).
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 fillet: Forms the main body of the dish, and its lean muscle sets the texture when cooked through.
Salt pork: Renders fat into the dish as it cooks, adding moisture and savoury flavour to the meat above.
Butter: Basting with butter adds richness and helps the surface brown and stay moist.

The step that matters

Cook in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for thirty-five minutes.. Beef fillet is lean and cooks quickly, so overcooking dries it out. Starting in a fully preheated oven gives even heat, and the fillet should be checked before the time runs out.

“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.