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Tournedos of Beef with Olives
2 pounds fillet beef, 8 croutons fried bread, 2 tomatoes, white sauce, olives, straw potatoes, 4 tablespoons Crisco, and seasoning. Cut fillet in slices 1 inch thick, trim into small rounds with cutter. Melt Crisco in saute pan, fry tournedos quickly and brown nicely, season with pepper and salt, and dress each on round crouton of bread, cut same size as fillet, and fried. On this place thin slice tomato that has been slightly cooked in Crisco; in center of tomato place a teaspoon white sauce; on that, again, arrange olives. Cut potatoes in strips, and fry them golden brown in hot Crisco; arrange these round tournedos, and serve hot.
A straightforward composed steak plate from a Crisco-sponsored cookbook, built in layers: crouton, steak, tomato, sauce, olive. The only difficulty is timing, since four components want to be hot at once.
- CriscoThe shortening is here because the book was written to promote it. Any neutral fat with a decent smoke point works; clarified butter or a butter-and-oil mix gives better browning and flavor for the steaks.
- Tournedos, in practiceTwo pounds of trimmed fillet cut into 1-inch rounds gives roughly eight small medallions, matching the eight croutons the recipe calls for; the recipe does not say how many it serves. Trimming rounds from the tapered end of a tenderloin wastes a good deal of meat, so save the scraps for stroganoff or stock.
- "Fry quickly"This is the hinge. A 1-inch fillet medallion needs roughly 2 to 3 minutes a side in a very hot pan for medium-rare, and it should rest a few minutes before plating. Cooked well through, as period recipes for beef often direct, lean fillet turns dry and gray.
- White sauceAn unthickened-sounding name for a basic bechamel: equal butter and flour cooked briefly, then milk whisked in, simmered until it coats a spoon, seasoned with salt, white pepper and a little nutmeg. A teaspoon per portion is a garnish, so make only about half a cup.
- OlivesThe recipe says only "olives"; a plain green olive, pitted and either whole or halved, suits the assembly. Brine-cured olives can be quite salty, so go carefully salting the steaks and sauce.
- Straw potatoesCut into matchsticks about 1/8 inch square, rinse off the surface starch, dry thoroughly, and fry at around 350-375F until golden. Wet potatoes will spit violently in hot fat.
- CroutonsRounds of firm white bread cut with the same cutter used for the meat, fried in fat until crisp on both sides. Cut them before frying, not after, or they crumble.
- Order of workFry the croutons and cook the tomato slices first and hold them in a low oven, keep the sauce warm over water, then do the potatoes and finally the steaks. Assemble immediately and serve.
Tournedos are small rounds cut from the tenderloin, a form that belonged to the restaurant repertoire and appears to have filtered into American middle-class cooking in the early twentieth century, when plated, garnished dishes were increasingly expected in place of a joint on a platter. This particular version comes from a Crisco-published dinner calendar of the 1910s, one of a wave of cookbooks issued by manufacturers to teach cooks to use a new product: Crisco, a hydrogenated vegetable shortening, was introduced in 1911, and the books written around it call for it in nearly every fried, sauteed and baked preparation, including places where butter or lard would have been used before. The garnish of tomato, a dab of white sauce and an olive, ringed by straw potatoes, is Escoffier-era plating scaled down for a home saute pan.