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Savoury Fillet of Beef

Savory fillet of beef with mushrooms, tomato sauce, and glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Savoury Fillet of Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Mince the shallots and boil them in vinegar until reduced by half.

  2. Add the white sauce and the egg yolks one by one, stirring well without boiling.

  3. Incorporate the butter in small pieces and season with pepper and salt, then strain the sauce.

Prepare the beef and tomatoes

  1. Remove the beef from the tin and cut it into neat pieces.

  2. Fry the beef pieces with the mushrooms in butter, seasoning to taste.

  3. Brush the beef with glaze and arrange it on a serving dish.

  4. Warm the tomatoes in their tin, slice them, and place a slice between each cutlet.

Serve

  1. Add any scraps of beef to the prepared sauce and pour it hot in the center of the dish.

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

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

  2. Tomato + tarragontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together391 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + tarragontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg yolks enrich the sauce and thicken it as they gently cook with the white sauce.
Butter
Butter, incorporated in pieces, adds richness and a smooth, glossy texture to the sauce.
Mushrooms
Mushrooms, fried in butter, add savoury flavour and moisture to the beef dish.
Shallots
Shallots, reduced in vinegar, build a mild, aromatic base for the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks to the white sauce. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat. If the sauce boils, the proteins scramble and it curdles, so the yolks must be stirred in off the boil or over very low heat.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, vinegar, butter, sauce, mushroom, tarragon, egg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, vinegar, butter, sauce, mushroom, tarragon, egg. 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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