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Braised Fillet of Beef
Tie up fillet of beef neatly with string and put in stewpan, bottom of which has been well Criscoed and lined with thin slices fat bacon and 2 sliced onions. Cook for 20 minutes, then barely cover with stock, add 1 wineglass of sherry, and bring to a boil; then add 1 small onion stuck with cloves, 1 small turnip, 1 carrot, 1 bouquet of herbs, 1 tablespoon Crisco, salt and pepper to taste.
Let meat simmer gently in this for 1 1/2 to 2 hours. For garnish, take equal quantities of French peas and string beans, artichoke bottoms, new carrots and turnips. Cut latter in uniform shapes with fancy vegetable cutter, and cook them separate in consomme. Strain off about 3/4 pint of stock from fillet of beef, and pour on brown roux, made with 2 tablespoons each of flour and Crisco; stir until it boils, add small piece of glaze and reduce a little over quick fire. Add dash of kitchen bouquet, salt, and pepper. Dish up fillet of beef, glaze it with some of sauce, and arrange vegetables around it in little heaps, each kind separate. Serve remainder of sauce in a boat.
A Crisco-era braise built on classic French method: a whole beef tenderloin sweated on a bed of bacon and onion, then simmered in stock and finished with a brown sauce. Most of the work is straightforward; the timing is the part to think hardest about.
- The timing is the problemA trimmed tenderloin simmered 1 1/2 to 2 hours will be grey and dry all the way through — the cut has almost no connective tissue to convert to gelatin, so long moist cooking only squeezes it out. If you want the dish as written, use a braising cut (chuck, brisket, top blade) for the full time; if you want tenderloin, brown it in the bacon and onion, then cook it in the covered pan only until it reads 125–130F at the centre, roughly 35–45 minutes for a 4 lb piece, and build the sauce from the braising liquid as directed.
- "Criscoed"Crisco was hydrogenated cottonseed shortening, launched in 1911, and this book exists to sell it. Use butter, beef fat, or a neutral oil in the pan and in the roux; the tablespoon stirred into the braising liquid can simply be left out.
- The first 20 minutesThe recipe gives no heat level or lid instruction. In the classical method this stage is a gentle covered sweat rather than a hard sear: the bacon and onions render and the meat colours lightly. Treat it that way — lid on, flame low — so the onions do not scorch before the stock goes in.
- A wineglass of sherryPeriod wineglasses ran small; read it as 2 fl oz, up to 4 if you like a more pronounced sherry note. Use a dry amontillado or fino rather than cream sherry.
- Glaze and kitchen bouquet"A small piece of glaze" is glace de viande, stock reduced to a firm jelly — a teaspoon of commercial demi-glace concentrate does the same job. Kitchen Bouquet is a caramel-and-vegetable browning liquid and is still sold; a few drops only, for colour.
- MeasuresThree-quarters of a pint of strained stock is 1 1/2 cups, which with 2 tablespoons each flour and fat gives a lightly bound sauce. Cook the roux to the colour of a hazelnut shell before adding liquid, or the sauce will taste of raw flour.
- The garnish vegetables"French peas" are petits pois. Artichoke bottoms come canned or jarred and need only warming. Cooking the turnips and carrots separately in consommé, rather than in the braise, is what keeps the little heaps distinct in colour and texture — worth the extra pan.
- YieldA whole fillet is 4 to 5 lb trimmed and serves eight to ten. The garnish assumes a formal service; scaled down, one or two of the vegetables will do.
This comes from a Procter & Gamble promotional cookbook of the 1910s, which is why a French classical braise arrives with Crisco lined up in three separate places — the shortening was new, unfamiliar, and being pushed as a universal replacement for butter and lard. The dish itself is filet de boeuf braisé straight out of the nineteenth-century restaurant repertoire: bacon and aromatics under the meat, whole root vegetables and a clove-stuck onion in the liquid, a brown sauce fortified with meat glaze, and the vegetables cut with a fancy cutter and set around the platter in separate mounds, in the manner of the classical garnishes. Braising a tenderloin at length reflects an older preference for meat cooked through and served under sauce, before the thermometer and the pink centre reshaped how the cut is treated. The book's own headings are unreliable, an artefact of how these menu-a-day calendars were assembled rather than any comment on the dish.