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Marinated Beef

A beef fillet marinated in a vinegar, wine, and water pickle, then cooked with bacon, anchovies, and a flour‑milk sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Marinated Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Marinate

  1. Sprinkle the fillet of beef with coarse sea salt and let it stand for 4 hours.

  2. Make a pickle by combining vinegar, red wine, and water in equal parts, adding onions, lemon slices, bay leaves, ginger, thyme, and marjoram.

  3. Boil the pickle and pour it over the fillet.

  4. Let the fillet sit for 3 days, boiling the pickle and pouring it over the fillet each day.

  5. On the fourth day, remove the fillet and lard it with thin strips of anchovies.

Cook

  1. Place the fillet in a stewpan on a layer of fat bacon slices, cover with more bacon, and moisten with some pickle.

  2. Cover the fillet with buttered paper and cook, adding a little pickle occasionally.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, mix flour with boiled milk, add butter, minced anchovies, and some pickle.

  2. Cook the sauce, strain it, add capers, and pour over the fillet.

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. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

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

Fillet of beef
Is the main cut that the pickle marinates and the cooking tenderises and flavours.
Vinegar
Acidity in the pickle that helps soften and flavour the surface of the meat.
Red wine
Adds acidity and savoury depth to the pickle that the fillet soaks in.
Flour
Thickens the milk-based sauce so it coats the fillet.
Anchovies
Add salty, savoury depth to the lardons and the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the sauce, giving it a smooth texture.

The step that matters

Letting the fillet sit for 3 days and re-boiling the pickle. The pickle must be boiled each day before pouring it back over the meat, so it stays safe and the marinade keeps penetrating the beef. Skipping the daily boiling or reheating can let the marinade spoil or leave the meat under-flavoured.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, vinegar, red wine, onion, clove, ginger, thyme):

  1. Plumfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, vinegar, red wine, onion, clove, ginger, thyme. 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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