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Fillets of Beef a LA Francaise

Beef fillets served with tomato, spinach puree, and a sherry‑based sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 198 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Fillets of Beef a LA Francaise

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the fillets

  1. Cut the beef fillet into neat rounds, each ½ inch thick and 3 inches in diameter.

  2. Grill the fillet rounds for 1 minute on each side.

  3. Place each grilled fillet on a slice of fried bread (crout) and season well.

Cook the tomatoes

  1. Slice the tomatoes thickly, place in a buttered dish, and cook in a 350 °F (175 °C) oven for 5 minutes.

  2. Top each fillet with a slice of cooked tomato and garnish with spinach puree.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, chop the shallot and mushrooms, then fry them in butter.

  2. Add stock, glaze, sherry, and herbs, then simmer for 20 minutes.

  3. Strain the sauce, thicken with cornflour, season with salt and pepper, and bring to a boil.

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. Spinach + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together198 recipes

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

  2. Shallot + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  4. Mushroom + sherrytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,176 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

  5. Spinach + mushroomtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together778 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef fillet
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked quickly to stay tender inside.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour when frying the shallot and mushrooms.
Cornflour
Thickens the strained sauce to a smooth, glossy consistency.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and adds savoury depth.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma to the sauce as it simmers.
Tomatoes
Add moisture and gentle acidity that balance the rich beef.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with cornflour. Cornflour must be fully cooked after it is stirred in, or the sauce stays cloudy and tastes raw. Bringing it to a boil activates its thickening starch evenly and keeps lumps from forming.

Swap the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, tomato, bread, shallot, mushroom, butter, sherry):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, tomato, bread, shallot, mushroom, butter, sherry. 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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