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Roast Fillet

Roast beef fillet cooked with vegetables, brown stock, and mushroom gravy, finished with Madeira or sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Roast Fillet

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

  1. Remove sinewy skin and gristle from the top of the fillet and most fat from the underside.

  2. In a baking pan, layer thin slices of larding pork, onion, carrot, turnip, and celery.

  3. Place the fillet on top of the vegetables.

  4. Pour 1 cup of brown stock over the fillet, then season with salt, pepper, parsley, bay leaf, and cloves.

Roast

  1. Cook in a hot oven (400°F / 200°C) for 30 minutes, basting frequently.

  2. Once done, drain off the gravy and remove excess grease.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a pan, melt 1 tablespoon of butter and mix with 1 tablespoon of flour until browned.

  2. Stir in the gravy and an additional cup of brown stock, cooking until it boils.

  3. Add the chopped mushrooms and let simmer for 5 minutes.

  4. Finish with a splash of Madeira or sherry, then pour around the fillet and serve.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fillet of beef
Is the main cut that is roasted, and its fat and gristle are trimmed first.
Larding pork
Bastes the fillet with fat as it cooks, keeping the lean meat moist and adding flavour.
Butter and flour
Form a browned roux that thickens the gravy into a smooth, rich sauce.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and body to the sauce as it simmers.
Madeira or sherry
Adds a sweet, fortified aroma and depth to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the butter and flour roux. Cooking the flour in fat until it turns golden removes raw starch taste and gives the sauce colour and nutty depth. Stopping too early leaves a pasty flavour, while over-browning makes it bitter and dark.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pork, carrot, turnip, celery, pepper, parsley):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, carrot, turnip, celery, pepper, parsley. 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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