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Braised Fillets of Beef

Braised fillets of beef larded with bacon, cooked with 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 fillets, about the size of a breakfast cup and ¾ inch thick.

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

  3. Hold each fillet in a clean cloth and use a larding needle to insert bacon strips into the fillets in regular rows.

Braise

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

  2. Add the bouquet garni, consisting of parsley, thyme, and bay leaf, tied together.

  3. Scrape and halve the carrots, peel the onion, and add these vegetables along with the celery to the sauté pan.

  4. Pour in the stock and braise the fillets for about 1.5 hours.

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 meat; slow braising in stock turns its tough fibres tender.
Fat bacon
Larded into the beef, it adds fat that keeps the lean meat moist and flavourful.
Stock
Braising liquid that gently cooks the beef and carries flavour into the sauce.
Carrots
Release sweetness and aromatic flavour into the braising liquid as they cook.
Onion
Softens and releases savoury aromatic sweetness into the braising liquid.

The step that matters

Braise the fillets for about 1.5 hours. Braising needs a gentle, low simmer rather than a rolling boil. Sustained moist heat breaks down connective tissue slowly, so the beef becomes tender without drying out.

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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