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Braised Fillets of Beef

Braised fillets of beef cooked slowly with bacon, bouquet garni, carrots, onion, celery, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Braised Fillets of Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Cut the fillet of beef into small round pieces, about the size of a coffee cup and ¾ inch thick.

  2. Cut the bacon into little strips, 1 inch long and ⅛ inch wide.

  3. Use a larding needle to insert the bacon strips into the fillet pieces in regular rows until one side is covered.

  4. Place the larded fillets in a clean sauté pan.

Braise

  1. Add the bouquet garni, halved carrots, peeled onion, and celery to the sauté pan.

  2. Pour in the stock, ensuring it does not cover the meat, and place the pan on the fire, basting the fillets continually.

  3. Cut a round piece of kitchen paper to fit the sauté pan and butter it.

  4. Once the stock boils, place the buttered paper over the fillets to prevent them from browning too quickly.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Thyme + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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 and becomes tender through slow braising.
Fat bacon
Larded strips add fat that melts into the meat, adding moisture and flavour.
Stock
Braising liquid that gently cooks the meat and builds a savoury sauce.
Carrots
Release sweetness and aroma into the braising liquid.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and aroma to the braising liquid.

The step that matters

Keeping the stock below the meat's top surface. Braising works best when the meat is partly submerged, so it cooks gently in the liquid and vapour. Covering the meat fully would turn the method into boiling, making the fillets tough and pale, and the buttered paper helps limit surface browning.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, parsley, thyme, carrot, celery):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, parsley, thyme, carrot, celery. 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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