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Fillets of Beef in a Marinade

Marinated beef fillets roasted after soaking in vinegar, water, carrots, onions, garlic, parsley, peppercorns, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Fillets of Beef in a Marinade

Oven, in the book's wordsA gentle oven

Ingredients

Directions

Marinate

  1. Neatly lard the fillet and place it in a marinade of vinegar and water.

  2. Add carrots, onions, garlic, parsley, peppercorns, and salt.

  3. Let it marinate for two days.

Roast and glaze

  1. Cut the fillet into two or three pieces based on its size.

  2. Roast the pieces until nearly done.

  3. Glaze the fillet, then return it to the oven for a few minutes.

  4. Glaze again and return to the oven for two more minutes, ensuring it is not too hot.

  5. Serve the fillet.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Garlic + parsleytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sirloin beef fillet
Forms the main meat; larding adds fat that keeps the lean cut moist during roasting.
Vinegar
Acidity in the marinade gently tenderises the surface proteins of the beef.
Garlic
Adds aroma that penetrates the meat during the long marinating time.

The step that matters

Glazing and returning to the oven. Sugars in a glaze darken quickly and can burn at high heat, so the oven must not be too hot. Short, repeated glazing lets the surface brown while the interior stays tender and cooks through gently.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, vinegar, carrot, onion, garlic, parsley):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, vinegar, carrot, onion, garlic, parsley. 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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