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Fillets of Beef a LA Rossine

Fillets of beef served with a brown butter and flour gravy, stock, lemon juice, shrimps, and horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 a LA Rossine

6 or 8 fillets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Divide the meat into 6 or 8 fillets, each ½ inch thick.

  2. Heat the butter in a frying pan until brown, then add the fillets and fry quickly on both sides.

  3. Remove the fillets from the pan and keep them hot.

Make the gravy

  1. Pour away nearly all the butter, retaining the sediment, and brown the flour in it.

  2. Add the stock, bring to a boil, then strain into a saucepan.

  3. Add lemon juice, seasoning, and shrimps to the strained stock.

Serve

  1. Arrange the fillets in a double row, resting one against another.

  2. Pour the gravy and shrimps over the fillets, garnish with scraped horseradish, and serve.

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

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

  3. Butter + shrimptop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,931 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

Fillet of beef
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked quickly to stay tender inside.
Butter
Fries the fillets and browns, adding richness and a nutty flavour to the pan.
Flour
Browned in the butter, it thickens the stock into a gravy.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the gravy that coats the fillets.
Picked shrimps
Added to the strained gravy, adding sweetness and a delicate seafood flavour.

The step that matters

Frying the fillets quickly on both sides. Searing over high heat browns the surface and seals in juices. Overcooking dries the thin fillets, so keeping the time short keeps them tender.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, butter, flour, pepper, shrimp):

  1. Avocadofits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Mangofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, flour, pepper, shrimp. 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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