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Beef, Roast Fillet of

A roast beef fillet marinated and baked, served with demi‑glace and horseradish sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Beef, Roast Fillet of

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Tie the meat into a good shape and place it on a dish.

  2. Pour the marinade over the meat and let it marinate for 3 hours, turning and basting frequently.

  3. Prepare a sheet of well-greased parchment paper.

Roast

  1. Drain half of the marinade and fold the remaining marinade and meat in the paper, securing the ends tightly.

  2. Roast in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 1 to 1½ hours, basting frequently with butter or drippings.

  3. Half an hour before serving, remove the paper and brush the meat with meat glaze until nicely browned.

Serve

  1. Serve the demi-glace sauce around the dish and the horseradish sauce in a sauceboat.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Horseradish + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Fillet of beef
Is the main cut that is roasted, providing the substance of the dish.
Salad oil
Carries the marinade flavours and helps keep the meat moist during roasting.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity to the marinade, brightening flavour and tenderising the surface slightly.
Meat glaze (in the method)
Browns the surface when brushed on near the end of roasting.

The step that matters

Half an hour before serving, remove the paper and brush the meat with meat glaze. Removing the paper too early leaves the surface pale, while leaving it on too long stops browning. Timing the glaze near the end lets the surface caramelise and brown in the hot oven without burning.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, horseradish, sauce, lemon, parsley, pepper, clove):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, horseradish, sauce, lemon, parsley, pepper, clove. 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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