Name: Sauted Fillets of Beef, Cherry Sauce
Ingredients: 6 fillets of beef; salt; pepper; butter; ¼ cup glaced cherries; sherry wine; Cherry Sauce

Why it works: Pepper and cherry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,336 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Sauted Fillets of Beef, Cherry Sauce

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook the fillets as in Sauted Fillets of Beef a la Moelle.
Arrange the fillets on a serving dish.
Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and spread with butter.
Pour Cherry Sauce over the fillets.
Soak the glaced cherries in boiling water for 15 minutes, then drain and cut in halves.
Cover the cherries with sherry wine and let stand for 3 hours.

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.

Pepper + cherrytop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,336 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,971 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,645 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,505 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Sherry + cherrytop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together106 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl pentanoate (yeast, fruit).

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

Swap the cherry

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, butter, sherry, wine, sauce):

Grapefits better
Plumfits better
Lemonfits better
Cherrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, butter, sherry, wine, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.