Name: Tenderloin of Beef
Ingredients: Tenderloin of beef; Larding pork; Gravy or sauce

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 ↓

Tenderloin of Beef

Ingredients

Tenderloin of beef
Larding pork
Gravy or sauce

Directions

Ask your butcher to remove the thin membrane from the tenderloin.
Lard the meat using a larding needle or cover it with a thin piece of larding pork.
Cook the tenderloin until done, then place it on a platter.
Carve the tenderloin across the loin, starting from the thickest end on the right.
Cut slices about twice as thick as regular roast beef slices.
Serve with a good gravy or sauce to enhance flavor.

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.

Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,690 recipes

Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).
Pork + saucetop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,666 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Beef + saucetop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,650 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).