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Fillet of Beef with Mushroom Sauce

A roasted beef fillet served with a mushroom sauce made from French mushrooms, beef stock, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 with Mushroom Sauce

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 beef

  1. Have the butcher prepare and lard the fillet with strips of salt pork.

  2. Season with pepper and spread thickly with butter.

  3. Add a little coarse sea salt to the boiling water and pour it into the pan.

Roast the beef

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 30 to 40 minutes, basting 4 to 5 times.

Make the mushroom sauce

  1. For the mushroom sauce, melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add 2 tablespoons of flour and stir until dark brown.

  3. Gradually add the beef stock and bring to a boil.

  4. Add the liquor from the mushrooms, season, and simmer for 20 minutes.

  5. Add the mushrooms and cook for 5 more minutes.

  6. Stir in the cream, let it boil, and remove immediately.

  7. Pour the sauce around 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. 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef fillet (tenderloin)
Lean, tender cut that is the centre of the dish; roasting cooks it through while basting keeps it moist.
Salt pork
Larding adds fat that bastes the lean fillet from within, adding moisture and flavour.
Butter
Fat spread over the fillet for browning, and melted with flour to start the sauce roux.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by forming a roux with the butter when cooked and stirred.
Beef stock
Liquid base of the sauce that carries savoury beef flavour.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour to dark brown. Stirring the flour and butter until dark brown builds a toasted, nutty roux colour and flavour; stopping early leaves a pale, raw-tasting sauce, while overcooking can scorch it and make it bitter.

“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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