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Fillets of Beef Sautes

Sautéed beef fillets in a sauce of stock, sherry, ketchup, pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fillets of Beef Sautes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim fillet pieces to 1 inch thick and 2 inches in diameter.

Cook

  1. Fry the fillets in butter over high heat until browned on both sides.

  2. In a separate pan, combine stock, sherry, ketchup, pepper, and salt.

  3. Add the fillets to the sauce and simmer for a few minutes.

  4. Stir in a little lemon juice and serve hot.

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

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

  2. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Sherry + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

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

  5. Sherry + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef fillets
Provide the tender main protein that browns in butter and holds its shape in the sauce.
Butter
Conducts heat for frying and promotes browning on the fillet surfaces.
Stock or thickened gravy
Supplies the liquid base of the sauce and adds savoury depth.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma to the sauce.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and tang to the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the fillets over high heat. Searing creates browned flavour through the Maillard reaction. Fillets that are crowded, wet, or under-heated steam instead, and lose that colour and flavour before they reach the sauce.

“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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