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Fillet of Beef with Mushroom Sauce

A roasted beef fillet served with a mushroom sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fillet of Beef with Mushroom Sauce

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Roast the beef

  1. Roast the beef fillet in a 300°F (150°C) oven for about three hours.

Make the mushroom sauce

  1. In a pan, brown the flour with the butter.

  2. Add the browned flour mixture to the meat drippings along with the water, salt, and pepper.

  3. Stir in the can of whole mushrooms.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the roast and serve.

  2. Garnish with fresh parsley.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

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

  5. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef fillet
Is the main cooked protein and supplies the drippings that flavour the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the fat and drippings.
Butter
Fat that browns with the flour, adding a nutty, toasted flavour to the sauce.
Whole mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and a tender texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the flour with the butter. Cooking the flour in fat until golden removes its raw taste and builds flavour. Stopping early leaves the sauce pasty, while over-browning makes it bitter and dark.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, flour, butter, pepper, mushroom):

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Turmericfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, butter, pepper, mushroom. 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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