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Fillet of Beef with Mushrooms

A fillet of beef cooked with onions, carrots, celery, cloves, and mushrooms in a butter and stock sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Fillet of Beef with Mushrooms

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the fillet

  1. Remove the muscular covering from the fillet with a sharp knife.

  2. Lard the fillet with salt pork.

  3. Place the onion, carrot, celery, and cloves in the bottom of a baking pan.

  4. Put the fillet on top, dredge with pepper, and spread thickly with butter.

Bake

  1. Add boiling water and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes, basting frequently.

  2. Once done, transfer the fillet to a hot dish.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In the pan, add the butter rolled in flour and let it brown.

  2. Mix well with the soup stock and bring to a boil.

  3. Strain into a small saucepan and add the mushrooms.

  4. Cook for 3 minutes, then remove from heat and stir in Worcestershire sauce, salt, and pepper.

  5. Pour the sauce over the fillet and serve.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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 cut, cooked gently in the oven to stay tender and juicy.
Butter
Adds richness and, rolled in flour, browns to thicken and flavour the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter and combined with the stock.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and body to the finished sauce.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the lean fillet as it cooks.

The step that matters

Browning the butter and flour. Cooking the butter and flour together until lightly browned removes the raw starch taste and builds colour and nutty flavour before the stock is added, which helps prevent lumps and a pasty sauce.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pork, onion, carrot, celery, pepper, butter):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, onion, carrot, celery, pepper, butter. 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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