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To Roast a Fillet of Beef

A fillet of beef roasted with butter and served hot with sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,448 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

To Roast a Fillet of Beef

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Remove the fillet from the inside of the sirloin using a sharp knife, leaving the fat on and trimming off the skin.

  2. Lard the fillet all over or roast it plain.

Roast

  1. Baste the fillet with butter while roasting.

  2. Roast in a brisk fire at 400°F (200°C) for about 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve very hot with your choice of sauce in a tureen.

  2. If desired, garnish with forcemeat balls and serve with brown gravy or currant jelly.

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 + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

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

  2. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Butter + tomatotop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Beef + curranttop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,464 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Fillet of beef
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked whole so it stays juicy and tender inside.
Butter
Used for basting, adding fat that helps the surface brown and stay moist during roasting.

The step that matters

Roast in a brisk fire. A hot oven browns the outside quickly while the centre stays juicy. Roasting too long or too slowly dries out the lean meat and leaves the surface grey.

Swap the currant

The recipe marks currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, butter, tomato):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Cherryfits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, tomato. 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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