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Braized Fillet of Beef, a LA Royale

A braised beef fillet cooked with ham, bacon, truffles, Madeira, and vegetables, finished with a reduced sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Ham and truffle work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 516 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Braized Fillet of Beef, a LA Royale

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fillet

  1. Lard the fillet of beef with small square pieces of ham, bacon, and truffles.

  2. Prepare for braising with the usual vegetables and one or two carcasses of game.

Braise and glaze

  1. Simmer gently on a slow fire, basting occasionally with its own juices.

  2. Once cooked, glaze the fillet brightly and dish it up.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Strain the braising liquid, clarify, and reduce it.

  2. Garnish the fillet with the reduced sauce and serve with crayfish, truffles, and cock's-combs.

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. Ham + truffletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together516 recipes

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

  2. Beef + truffletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together412 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethylphenol (must).

  3. Beef + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,729 recipes

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

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 slowly until tender.
Lean ham
Adds savoury, salty flavour to the fillet when larded through it.
Fat bacon
Melts during braising, adding fat that keeps the lean beef moist and flavourful.
Truffles
Contribute a strong, earthy aroma to the fillet and the dish.
Madeira
Adds sweetness and depth to the braising liquid as it reduces into the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer gently on a slow fire. Gentle heat lets the connective tissue in the fillet soften without the meat seizing and drying out. Vigorous boiling toughens muscle fibres and clouds the braising liquid, so the fillet should be basted and kept at a low simmer.

“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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