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Beef, Fillet Of, with Mushrooms

A fillet of beef wrapped with bacon and herbs, braised in tomato sauce and gravy, served with mushrooms and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Beef, Fillet Of, with Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fillet

  1. Trim the fillet of beef into shape and make a lengthwise incision.

  2. Insert the strip of bacon rolled in shallot, parsley, and pepper into the incision.

  3. Tie the fillet carefully with kitchen twine.

  4. Mince the large slice of bacon with savoury herbs, garlic, and onion.

  5. Melt the mixture in butter at the bottom of a stewpan.

  6. Place the fillet in the pan and let it brown.

Braise and finish

  1. Pour in the tomato sauce and a little rich gravy.

  2. Simmer for two hours.

  3. Strain the sauce.

  4. Place the meat on a hot dish.

  5. Remove the twine.

  6. Garnish with button mushrooms and fried parsley.

  7. Pour some sauce over.

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. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Shallot + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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, becoming tender through long, slow simmering.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour that melts into the meat and the sauce during cooking.
Butter
Carries the minced bacon and aromatics and adds richness as they begin to brown.
Tomato sauce
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding acidity and body as it reduces during simmering.
Onion
Builds sweetness and savoury depth as it softens and browns in the fat.

The step that matters

Simmer for two hours. A long, gentle simmer breaks down the connective tissue and collagen in the fillet, so it turns tender. A hard boil would toughen the surface and dry the meat, so keep the liquid at a low, steady simmer.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, shallot, parsley, pepper, garlic, onion, butter):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, shallot, parsley, pepper, garlic, onion, butter. 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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