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Fillet of Beef Marinaded

A beef fillet marinated in Port wine, vinegar, shallots, and allspice, stuffed with forcemeat, wrapped in veal caul, roasted, and glazed with cucumber sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 264 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Fillet of Beef Marinaded

Ingredients

Directions

Marinate

  1. Place the fillet in a mixture of boiling Port wine, vinegar, chopped shallots, and allspice.

  2. Let it marinate for 24 hours.

Prepare and roast

  1. Wipe the fillet dry and spread forcemeat over it.

  2. Roll the fillet tightly and cover it with veal caul.

  3. Roast the fillet until cooked to your preference.

Make the glaze and serve

  1. Reduce the marinade until it thickens to a glaze.

  2. Add cucumber sauce to the glaze and serve it around the beef.

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. Shallot + cucumbertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together264 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Shallot + allspicetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together386 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Allspice + cucumbertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together501 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Vinegar + cucumbertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Port wine + shallottop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together380 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef fillet
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked whole and served in slices.
Port wine
Flavours the marinade and, once reduced, becomes the sweet, thick glaze.
Vinegar
Adds acidity to the marinade, which helps balance the sweetness of the wine.
Shallots
Add a mild onion flavour to the marinade.
Forcemeat
Adds a seasoned layer around the fillet that keeps the meat moist as it roasts.
Veal caul
Wraps the fillet so the forcemeat stays in place and the meat stays moist.

The step that matters

Reduce the marinade to a glaze. The marinade must reduce slowly until it thickens. If it is under-reduced it stays thin, and if over-reduced it turns sticky and bitter as the sugars caramelise too far.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, port wine, vinegar, shallot, veal, cucumber, sauce):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, port wine, vinegar, shallot, veal, cucumber, sauce. 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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