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Fillet of Beef with Dutch Sauce

A beef fillet served with a sauce made from egg yolks, butter, lemon juice, cream, and water, accompanied by fried potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 Dutch Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Cut the beef into pieces about 1 inch thick.

  2. Broil the beef pieces for 7 minutes.

Fry the potatoes

  1. Slice raw potatoes with a vegetable cutter, dry them with a towel, and sprinkle with flour.

  2. Fry the potatoes in hot lard until brown.

  3. Remove the fried potatoes from the lard.

  4. Drain the potatoes on paper.

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks and cold water thoroughly.

  2. Add lemon juice, cream, pepper, and salt to the mixture.

  3. Whisk the mixture over low heat when the beef is almost done.

Serve

  1. Arrange the potatoes in the center of a dish surrounded by the beef.

  2. Pour the sauce over the beef and potatoes.

  3. Sprinkle the dish with salt and pepper.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  4. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Forms the main body of the dish and provides the meaty, savory base.
Egg yolks
Emulsify with butter and water and thicken the sauce as they gently heat.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, silky texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the yolks and butter.
Raw potatoes
Frying the flour-dusted slices in hot lard gives them a browned, crisp exterior.

The step that matters

Whisk the sauce over low heat. Egg yolks thicken into a smooth emulsion only at gentle heat; too much heat scrambles them into curds, so the sauce must be whisked slowly and kept low while the beef finishes.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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