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To Dress the Inside of a Gold Sirloin of Beef

A beef dish where pieces of gold sirloin are fried, then tossed in a pepper, salt, anchovy, and shallot gravy, finished with vinegar and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

To Dress the Inside of a Gold Sirloin of Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Cut the beef and a little fat into pieces as thick as your finger and two inches long.

  2. Dredge the pieces in flour.

Fry and sauce

  1. Fry the beef in butter until nicely browned.

  2. Drain the butter from the meat.

  3. Toss the meat in a rich gravy seasoned with pepper, salt, anchovy, and shallot.

  4. Do not let the mixture boil.

  5. Before serving, add 2 tablespoons of vinegar.

  6. Garnish with crimped 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. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Flour + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Pepper + shallottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the main meat texture, which browns well when fried in butter.
Flour
Forms a light coating that helps the beef brown and thickens the gravy.
Butter
Conducts heat for frying and adds browning and rich flavour to the meat.
Anchovy
Adds deep savoury flavour to the gravy without tasting distinctly fishy.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich gravy just before serving.

The step that matters

Do not let the mixture boil. Boiling a gravy with meat and dairy-free fat can toughen the meat and break the sauce, so keep it hot but below a boil.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits less well
  4. Potatofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, butter, pepper, anchovy, vinegar, parsley. 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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