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Fillet of Beef

A roasted beef fillet larded with fat salt pork and seasoned with pepper and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Fillet of Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Trim the fat off the tenderloin.

  2. Shape the trimmed piece like a fillet.

  3. Cut the trimmed pieces into 1‑inch square bits.

  4. Make a stew with mushrooms or potatoes.

Lard and roast

  1. Lard the fillet by inserting strips of fat salt pork over the upper surface using a larding needle.

  2. Place the fillet on a baking pan with thin slices of fat salt pork underneath.

  3. Cover with buttered paper to prevent burning.

  4. Bake or roast the fillet; for rare, roast for 15 minutes per pound; for well done, roast for 20 minutes per pound.

  5. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt when browned.

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. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  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. Pork + mushroomtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).

  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

Tenderloin of beef
Forms the main cut of meat, cooked whole as a fillet.
Fat salt pork
Adds fat that bastes the lean meat and keeps it moist as it roasts.
Butter
Buttered paper shields the surface from burning while the fillet roasts.

The step that matters

Roasting time per pound. Timing depends on weight and the desired doneness. Roasting too long dries out the lean tenderloin, while stopping too early leaves the centre undercooked, so check doneness against the target level.

“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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