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Larded Filet of Beef with Mushrooms

A roasted filet of beef larded with bacon or pork fat, cooked with mushrooms, turnip, carrot, onion, celery, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Larded Filet of Beef with Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a narrow baking pan, combine salt, drippings, and enough water to prevent burning.

  3. Add turnip, carrot, onion, and celery to the pan.

  4. Place the filet in the pan and roast for 30 minutes, covered with fat.

  5. Remove the fat, baste the filet with pan contents, and cook for an additional 15 minutes until browned.

  6. Slice the filet across vertically for serving.

  7. For larding, insert strips of bacon diagonally through the filet before cooking.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Filet of beef
The main meat; its lean, tender texture cooks quickly and needs careful timing to stay juicy.
Drippings
Adds fat and savory flavor and keeps the filet moist while it roasts.
Bacon
Inserted as larding, its fat bastes the lean beef from within and adds savory flavor.

The step that matters

Remove the fat, baste the filet with pan contents, and cook until browned. Basting with the pan juices keeps the lean surface moist and helps it brown. Because filet is lean and cooks fast, overcooking in this final stretch will dry it out.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, turnip, carrot, celery, pork, mushroom, pepper):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, turnip, carrot, celery, pork, mushroom, pepper. 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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