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Tenderloin Roast

A seasoned tenderloin roast cooked with butter, bacon, rye bread crust, onion, carrot, celery, stock, sour cream, Madeira wine, and champagne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Tenderloin Roast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the roast

  1. Skin the meat and season it with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Brown and braise

  1. Heat butter and a little bacon in a pan.

  2. Add a small piece of rye bread crust, onion, carrot, and celery.

  3. Brown the roast on both sides.

  4. Pour off excess fat.

  5. Add some stock.

  6. Gradually stir in 1 cup of sour cream.

Finish

  1. One-quarter hour before serving, add 2 tablespoons of Madeira wine and a little champagne.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tenderloin meat
The lean main protein, which is browned and then cooked gently in the sauce.
Sour cream
Adds richness and a tangy, creamy body to the pan sauce.
Butter
Carries the browning and adds fat and rich flavour to the pan.
Bacon
Renders fat and adds smoky, savoury flavour to the pan.
Madeira wine
Adds sweetness and depth of aroma to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Brown the roast on both sides. Browning creates flavourful crust through the Maillard reaction. Pale, under-browned meat gives a flat sauce, so the surface needs deep colour before liquid goes in.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, pepper, butter, rye, bread, carrot, celery):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, butter, rye, bread, 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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