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Fillet of Beef, with Sauce Hollandais

Beef fillet in cup-tins with macaroni, topped with a Worcestershire sauce gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Fillet of Beef, with Sauce Hollandais

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the moulds

  1. Grease the cup-tins or tea cups.

  2. Boil the macaroni, drain, and cut into 1-inch lengths.

  3. Arrange the macaroni in the cup-tins upright.

Make the beef mixture

  1. In a bowl, mix the chopped beef, bread crumbs, pepper, salt, Worcestershire sauce, and half of the Worcestershire sauce.

  2. Add the egg and stock, mix well, and divide into equal portions.

  3. Press each portion into the cups over the macaroni.

Steam and serve

  1. Cover each cup with kitchen paper and place in a shallow saucepan with boiling water halfway up the sides.

  2. Cover the saucepan and cook slowly for 1 hour, adding boiling water as needed.

  3. Five minutes before the hour is up, mix butter and flour in a small saucepan, add stock, and bring to a boil.

  4. Stir in the remaining Worcestershire sauce, pepper, and salt, and cook for 2 minutes.

  5. Carefully turn out the timbales onto a large platter and pour the sauce around them.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Tea + beeftop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together417 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methyl-3-(methyldithio)furan (thiamin, meat).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Binds the chopped beef and crumbs so the portions hold their shape when turned out.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the beef mixture body so it stays tender rather than dense.
Macaroni
Forms a firm, neat core and structure inside each timbale.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour, with flour thickening it into a smooth base.
Flour
Thickens the butter and stock into a smooth, pourable sauce.
Beef stock
Adds moisture to the beef mixture and savoury depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the timbales slowly in gently boiling water. Slow, moist heat cooks the egg-bound beef evenly and sets it without drying or toughening it. Vigorous boiling or too little water can leave the outside overcooked and the centre unset.

“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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