Skip to main content
Main

Fillets of Beef with Forcemeat

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

  1. Make forcemeat by mixing fowl's livers, grated bacon, butter, parsley, shallots, egg yolks, and spices.

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

Stuff and cook

  1. Lard the beef and place the forcemeat and stewed mushrooms between the halves.

  2. Tie the meat in a cloth and boil it in broth with white 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. Mushroom + white winetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fowls' livers
Form the soft, rich body of the forcemeat stuffing.
Egg yolks
Bind the forcemeat so it holds together when cooked.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, moist forcemeat.
Grated bacon
Adds savoury fat and flavour to the forcemeat.
1 fillet of beef
Main meat that is flattened, stuffed and gently boiled until cooked through.
1 pint small mushrooms, stewed
Adds moisture and earthy flavour inside the stuffed beef.

The step that matters

Tie the meat in a cloth and boil it in broth. The meat must be wrapped tightly so the stuffing stays inside the fillet. Keeping the broth at a gentle simmer, rather than a hard boil, cooks the beef evenly and keeps it tender instead of tough and dry.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, butter, shallot, egg, beef, mushroom, white 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, white 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.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes