Skip to main content
Main

Fillet of Beef

A roasted beef tenderloin with vegetables and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 the fillet

  1. Wipe and trim the fillet.

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

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

Roast and serve

  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 of boiling water and add it to the pan.

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

  5. 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
Is the main cut of meat, cooked whole so its interior stays tender and juicy.
Larding pork
Adds fat strips through the lean fillet, keeping it moist and adding richness as it melts.
Butter
Dotted over the fillet, it adds fat that promotes browning and a rich flavor.
Carrot
Sliced into the pan, it adds sweetness and aromatic flavor to the drippings.
Onion
Sliced into the pan, it adds savory depth and aroma to the drippings.

The step that matters

Chill the pork strips until firm before larding. Firm, cold fat holds its shape and cuts cleanly, so the strips stay intact when threaded through the lean meat and do not smear or melt out during handling.

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.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipes