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Fillets of Beef

Broiled beef fillets served with horseradish, olives, beef gravy, and fried potato ribbons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and potato work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 171 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Fillets of Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Take slices of the middle of the beef fillet, keeping the fat about 1 inch thick.

  2. Season with a little pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Melt fresh butter on a plate and dip the slices in it to prevent gravy from dropping out while broiling.

  4. Heat a gridiron over a clear fire and rub it with suet.

Broil and serve

  1. Broil the fillets, turning them every minute for 8 to 10 minutes until browned.

  2. Place the cooked fillets on a very hot dish, garnish with olives and scraped horseradish shaped like a rose.

  3. Serve with hot beef gravy poured around the dish.

Make the potato ribbons

  1. To make potato ribbons, peel raw potatoes and cut long thin slices resembling ribbons, about 2 inches wide and 5 inches long.

  2. Fry the potato ribbons in boiling fat until brown and crisp.

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. Horseradish + potatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Olive + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,458 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Slices of beef fillet
Provides the main meat, cooked quickly so the outside browns while the inside stays tender.
Fresh butter
Coats the slices to add richness and help hold in juices and gravy during broiling.
Suet
Rubbed on the hot gridiron to add fat so the meat does not stick.
Raw potatoes
Cut into ribbons and fried, where their starch crisps and browns in hot fat.
Beef gravy
Adds moisture and savory meat flavor to the finished fillets.

The step that matters

Broil the fillets, turning every minute. Frequent turning over a clear, hot fire lets the surface brown evenly while the interior cooks gently, so the meat stays juicy rather than dried out or burnt on one side.

Swap the horseradish

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

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Onionfits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, butter, olive, potato. 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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