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Fillets of Beef with Forcemeat

Beef fillets stuffed with a forcemeat of fowl livers, bacon, butter, parsley, shallots, egg yolks, and spices, then boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Fillets of Beef with Forcemeat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the forcemeat

  1. Mix fowl's livers, grated bacon, butter, parsley, shallots, egg yolks, and spices to make forcemeat.

Assemble the beef

  1. Cut the fillet of beef in half and flatten it with a cleaver.

  2. Lard the flattened beef.

  3. Place the forcemeat and stewed mushrooms between the beef slices.

  4. Tie the meat in a cloth.

Cook

  1. Boil the tied meat in broth with wine and sweet herbs.

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. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  2. Shallot + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Mushroom + winetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,632 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowls' livers
Break down into a soft, rich forcemeat that moistens the lean beef.
Egg yolks
Bind the forcemeat so it holds together during cooking.
Grated bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the forcemeat stuffing.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother texture in the forcemeat.
1 fillet of beef
Forms the main body of the dish, wrapped around the stuffing.

The step that matters

Tie the meat in a cloth. If the tie is loose, the stuffing can escape or shift during boiling, and the joint may cook unevenly. Firm, even binding keeps the layers together and the shape consistent.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, butter, shallot, egg, beef, mushroom, wine):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, butter, shallot, egg, beef, mushroom, wine. 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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