Why it works: Beef and ham are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,729 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓
Larded Fillet of Beef
Ingredients
Directions
With a skewer, draw a line across the top of the fillet.
Insert a needle into the meat about ¼ inch on one side of the line and push it out ¼ inch on the other side.
Draw the needle through, along with the lardon, until ½ inch of bacon is exposed on each side of the line, then release the lardon.
Insert the next lardon ½ inch further along and continue until the line is filled.
Draw another line, leaving 1 inch between the lines, and lard this in the same way, ensuring lardons come out just beside the previous ones.
Trim the ends of the lardons neatly with scissors to ensure they are all the same length.
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.
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Beef + hamtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,729 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
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