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Fillets of Beef Sautes

Beef fillets sautéed in a sauce of stock, sherry, ketchup, pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fillets of Beef Sautes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim the fillet into pieces about 1 inch thick and 2 inches in diameter.

Cook

  1. Fry the fillets in butter over high heat until browned on both sides.

  2. In a separate pan, combine stock or gravy, sherry, ketchup, pepper, and salt.

  3. Add the fillets to the sauce and simmer for a few minutes.

  4. Stir in a little lemon juice and serve hot.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef fillet
Forms the main protein; browning in butter gives it savoury flavour and a seared surface.
Butter
Conducts heat for frying and browns the surface of the fillets.
Stock or thickened gravy
Provides the liquid base of the sauce and carries savoury flavour to the meat.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma to the sauce, balancing the richness of the beef.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and tang to the sauce, deepening its colour and flavour.

The step that matters

Fry the fillets over high heat until browned on both sides. High heat browns the surface through the Maillard reaction, creating savoury flavour. Pale, underbrowned fillets lose this depth, and the sauce cannot make up for it.

“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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