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Beef Suzette

Beef Suzette is a dish of marinated beef fillets served over fried potatoes or French beans with a butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Beef Suzette

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Cut the beef into moderately thick slices and then into neat square pieces.

  2. Marinate the meat in a pie dish with salad oil, vinegar, black pepper, bruised parsley, and lemon thyme for 2 hours.

  3. Remove the meat from the marination and wipe the meat.

Cook the beef

  1. Cook the meat quickly in a frying pan with hot dripping over high heat.

  2. Scatter chopped parsley or horseradish over the fillets.

  3. Place the fillets over fried potatoes or French beans arranged in the center of a hot dish.

Prepare and cook the beans

  1. Remove strings from the French beans, cut them into thin strips, and wash them in cold water.

  2. Boil the beans in a saucepan with plenty of water, a small piece of baking soda, and salt for about 30 minutes.

  3. Drain the beans and let them rest on a cloth for a few minutes.

  4. Melt butter in a stewpan and add the beans.

  5. Season the butter and beans with salt, pepper, sugar, and nutmeg.

  6. Simmer the beans for 5 minutes.

  7. Add chopped parsley to the beans.

  8. Cook gently for another 5 minutes before serving.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fillet of beef
Tender meat that stays juicy when cooked quickly over high heat.
Vinegar
Acidity in the marinade that helps tenderise and flavour the meat.
Salad oil
Carries the herbs and pepper into the meat and keeps its surface from drying.
French beans
Vegetable base that is cooked until soft and finished in seasoned butter.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the seasoning over the cooked beans.
Baking soda (in the method)
Added to the boiling water to help the beans soften and keep a bright green colour.

The step that matters

Cook the meat quickly over high heat. Beef cooked fast over high heat browns on the outside while staying tender inside. Cooking it too long dries and toughens the slices.

“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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