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Roast Fillet

Roast fillet of meat larded with pork, cooked with vegetables and brown stock, finished with a brown gravy.

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 (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the fillet

  1. Lard the fillet and remove sinewy skin, gristle, and excess fat.

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

  3. Place the fillet on top and pour over the brown stock.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, parsley, bay leaf, and cloves.

Roast

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

  2. Drain the gravy and remove excess grease.

Make the gravy and serve

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

  2. Add the gravy and 1 cup of brown stock, stirring until it boils.

  3. Stir in the chopped mushrooms and simmer for 5 minutes.

  4. Add Madeira or sherry, 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fillet of meat
Forms the main cut; its lean muscle is the dish's centrepiece and cooks through in the oven.
Larding pork
Adds fat that bastes the lean fillet from within and keeps it moist during roasting.
Butter
Combined with flour to form a roux that thickens and enriches the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy when cooked with butter, giving it body.
Madeira or sherry
Adds aromatic depth and a touch of sweetness and acidity to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the butter and flour roux. Cooking the flour in fat until browned develops nutty flavour and colour, and it must be stirred so it does not scorch. Under-cooked flour leaves a raw taste, while over-browning turns it bitter.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, 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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