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Fillet of Beef with Sauce

Fillet of beef served with a sauce made from cream, egg yolks, butter, pepper, salt, lemon juice, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fillet of Beef with Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beef

  1. Rub a griddle with butter and place the beef slices on it.

  2. Cook the beef over the fire for 7 minutes.

  3. Transfer the beef to a dish and pour Dutch sauce around it.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. To make the sauce, combine cream, egg yolks, butter, pepper, salt, lemon juice, and water in a saucepan.

  2. Whisk the mixture over low heat, being careful not to let it burn.

  3. Once hot, remove from heat 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and give it a rich, smooth body as they set gently with heat.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the sauce feel smooth and silky.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances its fat.
Beef
Main protein; searing on the griddle browns the surface and adds flavour.

The step that matters

Whisking the sauce over low heat. Egg yolks scramble if they get too hot, so gentle low heat and constant whisking keep the sauce smooth and prevent it from curdling or burning.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, sauce, cream, egg, pepper. 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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