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To Roast a Fillet of Beef

A fillet of beef roasted with butter and served hot with tomato or eschalot sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,448 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

To Roast a Fillet of Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the fillet from the inside of the sirloin with a sharp knife, leaving the fat on and trimming off the skin.

  2. Lard the fillet or roast it plain, basting with butter.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast in a brisk fire for about 1 hour and 15 minutes.

  2. Serve very hot with tomato sauce, sauce piquante, or eschalot sauce in a tureen.

  3. Garnish with forcemeat balls if desired.

  4. Serve with brown gravy or currant jelly.

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 + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

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

  2. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Butter + tomatotop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Beef + curranttop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,464 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Fillet of beef
Forms the main body of the dish, so its tender lean meat is the centre of the dish.
Butter
Basting fat that adds richness and helps the outside brown as it roasts.

The step that matters

Roast in a brisk fire. Intense, steady heat sears the outside and browns it while the centre stays rosy. Too low a heat or too long a roast dries the meat and leaves it grey and tough.

Swap the currant

The recipe marks currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, butter, tomato):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Cherryfits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, tomato. 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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