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Chapon a LA Dauphine

A beef fillet dish cooked with butter, mushrooms, truffles, and Madeira sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and truffle are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 1,900 recipes mention both. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

The recipe

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Cut the fillet into 8 even slices and trim each neatly.

  2. Season the slices with salt and pepper.

Cook

  1. Melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a sauté pan over medium heat.

  2. Fry the fillets on one side, then turn them over.

  3. Cover the fried side with finely chopped mushrooms seasoned with a little sauce and lemon juice.

  4. Place the remaining butter on top and cover with buttered paper.

  5. Cook in the oven at 350°F (175°C) for another 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Arrange the fillets on a hot dish and place a slice of truffle on top of each.

  2. Pour hot Madeira sauce around the base of the dish and serve hot.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Mushroom + truffletop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,900 recipes

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

  2. Beef + mushroomtop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,231 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,039 recipes

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

  4. Butter + mushroomtop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together12,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Beef + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned 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

Fillet of beef
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked tender and juicy.
Butter
Adds richness and helps brown the fillets in the pan.
Preserved mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and moisture to the layer over the beef.
Truffles
Provide a strong, aromatic finish on top of each fillet.

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Grapeabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Red currantabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, mushroom, truffle, pepper, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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