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Fillets of Beef in a Marinade

Marinated beef fillets roasted after soaking in vinegar, water, carrot, onion, garlic, parsley, peppercorns, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Fillets of Beef in a Marinade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the marinade

  1. Lard the fillet of beef neatly.

  2. Combine vinegar and water in a bowl.

  3. Add carrot, onion, garlic, parsley, peppercorns, and salt to the mixture.

  4. Submerge the fillet in the mixture and refrigerate for 2 days.

Roast and glaze

  1. After marinating, cut the fillet into 2 or 3 pieces.

  2. Roast the fillet pieces until nearly done.

  3. Glaze the fillet, then return it to the oven for a few minutes.

  4. Glaze again before serving.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Garlic + parsleytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sirloin beef fillet
Lean meat that becomes tender and juicy through marinating and gentle roasting.
Vinegar
Acid that slightly softens the meat's surface and adds a tangy flavour.
Onion
Aromatic vegetable that adds savoury sweetness to the marinade's flavour.
Garlic
Pungent aromatic that flavours the marinade and the meat beneath the surface.

The step that matters

Submerge the fillet in the mixture and refrigerate for 2 days. The fillet must stay fully covered and cold for the whole marinating period, so the acidic liquid penetrates evenly and the meat does not spoil.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, vinegar, carrot, onion, garlic, parsley):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, vinegar, carrot, onion, garlic, parsley. 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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