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Lemon-juice (Mac doine Trim off all the fat)
Macédoine. Trim off all the fat and skin, cut the fillet into neat pieces about half an inch thick. Fry quickly in two ounces of butter. Skin the tomatoes and cut them into slices, put them on a baking sheet with some pieces of fat cut into rounds, and bake for three or four minutes. Dish the fillets in a circle on mashed potato, put a piece of fat and tomato on each fillet, also a small pat of Maître d'Hôtel butter, made of three ounces of butter, chopped parsley, and lemon-juice mixed; pour some half-glaze round, and put some macédoine in the centre of the fillets.
Filets de Bœuf à la Régence.
Ingredients.
Four pounds of Fillet of Beef.
Two quarts of Stock, and one pint of White Stock.
This is the finishing method for a fillet of beef macédoine: medallions on mashed potato, each crowned with tomato and parsley butter, with demi-glace poured round and diced vegetables piled in the centre. The text runs straight into the opening lines of the next recipe, Filets de Bœuf à la Régence, which are not part of this dish.
- What the fillet is"Fillet" here is whole beef tenderloin, trimmed of chain, fat and silverskin, as the recipe's "trim off all the fat and skin" directs. Cut into half-inch medallions it wants very high heat and very little time — a minute or two a side in the butter should be enough, and longer will take them past medium-rare.
- Cook the meat lastHave the potato, tomatoes, macédoine and sauce all standing ready. Medallions this thin cool and grey within a couple of minutes of leaving the pan, so the assembly should be a matter of seconds, not a second round of cooking.
- "Pieces of fat cut into rounds"The recipe does not say which fat is meant. Rounds of beef marrow, poached or briefly baked, are one plausible reading for a garnish of this type; rounds of firm suet or fat from the fillet trimmings are another. Marrow is the version worth trying under the tomato.
- Oven for the tomatoesThe book gives no temperature; three or four minutes suggests a hot oven (a modern cook might use something in the 425–450F range). You want the slices heated through and lightly set, not collapsed — skinned tomato goes to pulp quickly.
- Maître d'Hôtel butterThree ounces of butter (about 6 tablespoons) creamed with chopped parsley and lemon juice, plus salt and pepper. Roll it in paper, chill it firm, and slice off pats; soft butter will simply run off the meat.
- Half-glazeDemi-glace: brown stock reduced with espagnole until it coats a spoon. A reduced beef stock finished with a knob of butter serves the same purpose. Pour it round the base of the potato, never over the fillets, or the butter pat is lost.
- MacédoineA macédoine is a mixture of vegetables cut in even small dice — classically carrot, turnip, French beans and peas — cooked separately so each keeps its colour, then bound with butter or a little cream. It goes in the well made by the ring of medallions.
- Quantities and yieldNo amounts are given for the fillet, tomatoes or potato. The four pounds of fillet printed after this passage belongs to the next recipe, so no yield can be worked out for this dish from the text as it stands.
The macédoine — a mixture of vegetables cut to the same small dice — takes its name from Macedonia, by a folk etymology often traced to a joke about Alexander's empire being an assortment of unlike peoples held together in one state; the culinary sense is documented in French cookery writing from the eighteenth century onward. This recipe belongs to the classical repertoire that Escoffier and his contemporaries codified: a garnished fillet under a named sauce, plated in a ring, with everything cut to size and finished at the last moment. Books of this kind were aimed at cooks in large private houses and at the cookery-school students training to enter them, which is why the instructions assume you already have brown stock reduced to half-glaze standing by and can turn out a macédoine without being told how. The trailing ingredient list — four pounds of fillet, two quarts of stock — is the head of the next entry, a casualty of how these compilations were typeset and later scanned.