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Fillet of Beef

A fillet of beef cooked with onions, parsley, bay leaf, butter, and a mushroom ketchup sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Fillet of Beef

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the fillet

  1. Lard the fillet.

  2. Place the fillet in a pan with sliced onion, parsley, and bay leaf.

  3. Spread the fillet thickly with butter.

  4. Dissolve salt in boiling water.

  5. Pour the dissolved salt water into the pan.

Bake

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes, basting three or four times.

Make the sauce

  1. Remove the fillet from the pan.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon of butter to the pan and brown the fillet.

  3. Stir in 1 tablespoon of flour and 1 pint of stock.

  4. Strain the mixture after boiling.

  5. Add mushrooms and ketchup.

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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 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

Fillet of beef
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked tender and juicy under butter and basting.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and helping the fillet brown in the pan.
Flour
Thickens the stock-based sauce as it cooks, giving it body.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding savoury depth.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and texture to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the fillet in butter before making the sauce. Browning creates flavourful compounds through the Maillard reaction. Removing the fillet and reheating the pan with butter needs enough heat to brown the surface without burning the butter and drippings that form the base of the sauce.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, butter, sauce, flour, mushroom, ketchup. 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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