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Filets De Boeuf a LA Madeleine

Filets de Boeuf à la Madeleine is a steak dish cooked in clarified butter, meat glaze, fresh butter, lemon juice, shallot, thyme, and tarragon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 602 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Filets De Boeuf a LA Madeleine

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Sear the beef

  1. Melt the clarified butter in a pan.

  2. Add the shallot, thyme, and tarragon; sauté until fragrant.

  3. Add the fillet and sear on all sides.

Finish and serve

  1. Pour in the meat glaze and lemon juice; simmer until cooked to your liking.

  2. Serve hot, garnished with fresh herbs.

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. Shallot + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Thyme + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together528 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  4. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Lemon + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fillet of beef
Main protein; searing browns its surface and adds savory flavor.
Clarified butter
Fat that sears the beef at high heat without burning like whole butter.
Meat glaze
Concentrated meat stock that adds savory depth and body to the pan sauce.
Lemon juice
Acidity that brightens the rich butter and meat glaze sauce.
Shallot
Mild aromatic that sweetens and deepens the flavor of the sauce.

The step that matters

Pour in the meat glaze and lemon juice; simmer until cooked to your liking.. Simmering reduces and concentrates the glaze into a sauce while the beef cooks. Cooking too long toughens the meat, so check doneness often and remove the fillet as soon as it reaches the desired level.

“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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