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Fillet of Beef

A roasted beef tenderloin larded with pork, cooked with onions, carrots, celery, garlic, bay leaves, and salt, served with brown mushroom sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Fillet of Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wipe and trim the fillet.

  2. Cut the pork into strips 3 inches long, ½ inch wide, and ¼ inch thick.

  3. Chill the strips until firm, then lard the upper side of the fillet.

Roast

  1. Slice the vegetables and place them, along with the seasonings and meat trimmings, in a baking pan.

  2. Place the fillet on top of the vegetables and dot with pieces of butter.

  3. Dissolve the salt in ½ cup boiling water and add it to the pan.

  4. Roast for 15 minutes per pound plus an additional 15 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with brown mushroom sauce.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef tenderloin
Forms the main body of the roast, cooking to a tender, sliceable texture.
Larding pork
Adds fat through the lean fillet, keeping it moist and adding flavor as it renders.
Butter
Adds fat on the surface, promoting browning and a rich flavor.
Onion
Releases aromatic flavor into the pan juices as it roasts.
Carrot
Adds subtle sweetness and aroma to the pan juices as it roasts.

The step that matters

Chilling and larding the pork strips. The strips must be chilled until firm so they hold their shape and can be threaded through the fillet cleanly. Soft fat smears and does not stay in place, so the lardons would not keep the meat moist as it roasts.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pork, onion, carrot, celery, butter):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, onion, carrot, celery, butter. 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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