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Fillet of Beef with Mushroom Sauce

A roasted beef fillet larded with salt pork, served with a mushroom sauce made from butter, flour, stock, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Fillet of Beef with Mushroom Sauce

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the beef

  1. Trim the ends of the salt pork strips so they can be inserted into a larding needle.

  2. Draw the strips through the back of the fillet, spacing them 2 inches apart.

  3. Roast the fillet in a 400°F (200°C) oven for about 1 hour.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and stir in the flour until smooth; cook for 5 minutes.

  2. Add the mushrooms, stock, and cream; season with salt and pepper.

  3. Cook the sauce for 10 minutes, then transfer to a double boiler to keep warm until serving.

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

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

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

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

  3. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  4. Pork + mushroomtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,875 recipes

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

  5. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Fillet of beef
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked by roasting until done.
Salt pork
Larded through the fillet, where its fat bastes the lean meat as it roasts.
Butter
Melts with the flour to form the roux that thickens the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked in melted butter to form a roux.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding savory flavor.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the roux before adding liquid. Cooking the butter and flour together for the full five minutes removes the raw flour taste and lets the starch thicken smoothly once the liquid goes in. Stirring until smooth prevents lumps.

“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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