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To Cook a Fillet of Beef

A fillet of beef baked with pork, suet, and a mushroom sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 the fillet

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

  2. Place the trimmed and larded fillet of beef in a small baking pan.

  3. Add chopped pieces of pork and chopped beef suet to the bottom of the pan.

  4. Sprinkle coarse sea salt and black pepper over the fillet.

  5. Pour a large ladleful of hot stock or boiling water into the pan.

Roast the beef

  1. Bake in the oven for half an hour, basting often with hot stock.

Make the mushroom sauce

  1. For the mushroom sauce, take a ladleful of stock free from grease.

  2. Add juice from the canned mushrooms and thicken with a roux of flour and butter.

  3. Season the sauce with pepper, salt, and a few drops of lemon juice.

  4. Add the canned mushrooms and let the sauce simmer for a few minutes.

  5. Pour the sauce over the fillet of beef 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. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  5. Pork + mushroomtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).

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

What each ingredient does

Fillet of beef
Provides the main meat, which cooks through gently in the oven.
Flour
Thickens the sauce together with butter to give it body.
Butter
Forms the roux with flour, adding richness and helping thicken the sauce.
Canned mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and texture to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds a little acidity that brightens the savoury sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with the roux. Flour and butter must be cooked together before the liquid is added, or the sauce can taste raw and form lumps. Simmering lets the starch swell fully and thicken smoothly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Avocadofits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Mangofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, pepper, mushroom, flour, 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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