Skip to main content
Main

Baked Fillet of Beef

A fillet of beef baked with lard, aromatics, and broth, served with the strained sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Baked Fillet of Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the surface of the fillet of beef and lard it with thick spiced lard.

  2. Truss the fillet properly and place it in a saucepan or bake‑kettle, ensuring it does not touch the bottom.

Cook

  1. Add slices of lard, onions, cloves, laurel leaves, carrot, thyme, parsley, leeks, salt, peppercorns, and a little broth or water.

  2. Cover the stewpan and bring to a boil, then reduce heat and cook for 2 hours over gentle fire.

  3. Half an hour before serving, place heat evenly over the cover to give the meat a good color.

Serve

  1. After cooking, untruss the fillet and serve with the sauce strained.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Laurel + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,444 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Clove + laureltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Thyme + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together360 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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; long gentle cooking makes it tender and juicy.
Lard
Adds fat and moisture, carrying flavour into the meat and helping it stay succulent.
Onions
Release sweetness and aromatic flavour into the cooking liquid, which becomes the sauce.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and body to the cooking liquid used for the sauce.

The step that matters

Keeping the fillet off the bottom of the pan. If the meat rests on the base, it can scorch and stick under direct heat, while the gentle surrounding liquid and cover keep it cooking evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, clove, laurel, carrot, thyme, parsley, leek):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, clove, laurel, carrot, thyme, parsley, leek. 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.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes