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Fillet, Roasted

A roasted sirloin fillet served with a glaze and horseradish sauce.

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 the beef

  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 horseradish.

Serve

  1. Serve horseradish sauce in a separate 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. 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

Sirloin beef fillet
Lean, tender meat that is the main element of the dish.
Beef dripping
Fat that carries heat and adds richness and browning to the meat.
Glaze
Adds sweetness and shine, and helps the surface brown.
Onion
Aromatic base that adds flavour to the gravy from the roasting tin.

The step that matters

Removing the paper to brown the meat. The paper protects the meat while it roasts gently. Removing it lets the surface dry and brown through the Maillard reaction, which builds flavour and colour.

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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