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Fillets of Beef or Teal

Beef or veal fillets glazed with Bovril, served with roasted tomatoes, boiled carrot and turnip, and a wall of mashed potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot 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 or Teal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Shape each fillet into a neat piece about 1 inch thick.

  2. Fry the fillets in the suet until browned.

  3. Glaze the fillets with Bovril.

Prepare the sides

  1. Mash the potatoes and form a wall around the fillets in a circle.

  2. Bake the tomatoes and place a small piece on each fillet.

  3. Slice and cut the carrot and turnip into 1-inch lengths, boil each separately.

Assemble and serve

  1. Garnish the fillets with the boiled vegetables piled in the middle.

  2. Serve with brown sauce around the base 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. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Parsley + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Fillets of beef
Provide the main protein; browning in suet gives a savoury, seared crust.
Suet
Supplies fat for frying, so the fillets brown evenly and gain flavour.
Bovril
Adds a salty, savoury glaze that deepens colour and flavour on the beef.
Potatoes
Mashed to form a firm wall that holds the fillets and sides in place.
Tomatoes
Baking softens their flesh and concentrates their sweetness and acidity.

The step that matters

Frying the fillets in the suet until browned. Searing over fat creates browning through the Maillard reaction, which builds flavour and colour. Too little heat steams the meat grey instead.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, parsley, carrot, turnip, potato):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, parsley, carrot, turnip, potato. 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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