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Fillet, Roasted

A roasted sirloin fillet served with glaze, horse-radish garnish, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Fillet, Roasted

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the fat from the fillet and trim it neatly.

  2. Tie the fillet in shape and cover it with a sheet of white paper spread with beef dripping.

Roast and glaze

  1. Roast in the usual way, removing the paper to brown the meat.

  2. Make gravy in the roasting tin and add a little glaze.

  3. Brush the meat with thin glaze and garnish with scraped horse-radish.

Serve

  1. Serve with gravy and any suitable vegetable puree or braised vegetables.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Thyme + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef sirloin fillet
Forms the main meat, which browns on the outside while staying tender inside.
Beef dripping
Fat that carries heat evenly and helps the surface brown during roasting.
Glaze
Adds shine and a concentrated savoury sweetness to the browned surface.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and sweetness to the gravy made in the roasting tin.

The step that matters

Removing the paper to brown the meat. The paper protects the surface early on, but the meat only browns when it is exposed to direct dry heat. Browning comes from the Maillard reaction, which needs a dry surface, so the paper must come off in time for a good crust to form.

Swap the radish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, parsley, thyme, onion, celery, carrot, horse):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Radishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, parsley, thyme, onion, celery, carrot, horse. 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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