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Little Fillets of Beef

Beef fillets sautéed with mushrooms, served over potato puree.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Little Fillets of Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Cut the fillet into slices about ½ inch thick and flatten them with a cold, wet heavy knife.

  2. Trim the slices into rounds 2 to 2½ inches in diameter and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Cook the beef and mushrooms

  1. Melt 1 oz of butter in a frying pan over medium heat and cook the fillets for 8 minutes, turning once or twice.

  2. In another pan, melt the remaining 1 oz of butter, season the mushrooms with salt and pepper, and fry them until cooked.

Serve

  1. Prepare a potato puree and place it in a piping bag with a large rose tip.

  2. Pipe 6 to 8 rounds of the potato puree onto a hot dish.

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. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Potato + tomatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Mushroom + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 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
Forms the main protein; cooking it briefly and turning it browns the surface for flavour.
Mushrooms
Add savoury, earthy flavour and moisture that softens as they cook.
Butter
Conducts heat in the pan and adds richness and browning.
Potato puree
Provides a smooth, soft base that contrasts with the seared beef.

The step that matters

Flattening and trimming the fillet slices. Pressing the slices to an even thickness helps them cook at the same rate, so the centres are not overdone while the edges brown.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, mushroom, butter, pepper, tomato, sauce):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Onionfits about as well
  4. Shallotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, mushroom, butter, pepper, tomato, 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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