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Beef Fillets with Horseradish Sauce

Beef fillets served with a horseradish cream sauce and mashed potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Radish and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 297 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Beef Fillets with Horseradish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Sauté the fillets in the butter until browned.

  2. Arrange the fillets on a bed of mashed potatoes.

  3. In a bowl, whip the cream until stiff, then mix in horseradish, mustard, vinegar, and salt.

  4. Place the horseradish sauce in the center of the fillets and drizzle brown sauce around.

  5. Garnish with watercress.

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. Radish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together297 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Horse + radishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together529 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  3. Horse + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together201 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  4. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Fillet of beef
The main protein; browning in butter adds savoury flavour to the outside.
Whipped cream
Adds a light, smooth body to the horseradish sauce.
Grated horseradish
Provides the sharp, pungent heat that defines the sauce.
Mixed mustard
Adds sharpness and depth that balances the cream's richness.
White vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich cream and cuts its heaviness.

The step that matters

Whipping the cream until stiff. Cream must be whipped only to stiff peaks; over-whipping turns it grainy and can cause it to separate, while under-whipping leaves the sauce thin and runny once the horseradish and vinegar are folded in.

Swap the radish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, cream, horse, mustard, vinegar, butter):

  1. Radishthe original
  2. Horseradishfits about as well
  3. Onionfits about as well
  4. Shallotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, cream, horse, mustard, vinegar, butter. 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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