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Fillets of Beef

Beef fillets rolled with a mushroom and butter mixture, baked in a pie dish with a mushroom ketchup gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Fillets of Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Cut the steak into strips about 3 inches wide and pound them flat with a chopper.

  2. Mix the chopped mushrooms with salt, pepper, and small pieces of butter.

Roll and bake

  1. Lay the mushroom mixture over the steak strips, roll them up, and secure with a needle and thread or tiny skewers.

  2. Place the fillets in a pie dish, cover with another dish to retain steam, and bake.

Finish the gravy

  1. Thicken the gravy in the baking dish with flour and butter, then add mushroom ketchup for seasoning.

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. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Round beef steak
Forms the wrapper around the filling and becomes tender when baked.
Fresh mushrooms
Adds moisture and savory, earthy flavor to the filling.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and helps carry flavor through the filling.
Flour
Thickens the pan juices into a smooth gravy.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savory depth to the gravy.

The step that matters

Covering the fillets while baking. The covering dish traps steam around the beef, keeping the meat moist so it does not dry out in the oven.

“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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