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Fillets of Beef a LA Francaise

Beef fillets served with tomato, spinach puree, and a mushroom‑shallot sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 198 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Fillets of Beef a LA Francaise

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the beef and tomatoes

  1. Cut the beef fillet into neat rounds, each ½ inch thick and 3 inches in diameter.

  2. Grill the fillet rounds for 1 minute on each side.

  3. Slice the tomatoes thickly and cook in a buttered dish in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 5 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, chop the shallot and mushrooms and fry them in butter.

  2. Add stock, glaze, sherry, and herbs, then simmer for 20 minutes.

  3. Strain the sauce, thicken with cornflour, season, and bring to a boil.

Assemble and serve

  1. Serve one fillet on each slice of fried bread and season well.

  2. Place a slice of cooked tomato on each fillet and garnish with spinach puree.

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. Spinach + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together198 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Shallot + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Sherry + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,176 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

  5. Spinach + mushroomtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together778 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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 protein, cooked quickly so it stays tender and browned on the outside.
Butter
Adds richness and helps fry the shallot and mushrooms for flavour.
Cornflour
Thickens the strained sauce to a glossy, coating consistency.
Tomatoes
Add moisture and gentle acidity that balances the rich beef and sauce.
Sherry
Adds aromatic depth and acidity to the sauce as it simmers.
Stock
Provides the liquid base that carries the savoury flavour of the sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with cornflour. Cornflour must be stirred into the liquid and brought to a boil to fully gelatinise its starch. Otherwise the sauce stays thin or tastes floury.

Swap the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, tomato, bread, butter, sherry, shallot, mushroom):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, tomato, bread, butter, sherry, shallot, mushroom. 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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