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Broiled Fillet of Beef
Cut a fillet of beef into slices about one inch thick, moisten them with olive oil and sprinkle with a little lemon juice or vinegar. Stand aside one or two hours. Then place on a wire broiler and broil over a quick fire for five minutes. Serve on a hot plate with Tomato Sauce poured over them. Broiled fillet is also nice served with Okra and Tomato Sauce.
A short recipe that assumes a cook standing over live coals with a hinged wire broiler. The technique translates cleanly, but the timing and the equipment need translating first.
- What a fillet is"Fillet of beef" is the whole beef tenderloin. Cut into inch-thick slices it becomes what a butcher now sells as filet mignon or tenderloin steaks, roughly 5-6 oz each.
- A quick fireCoals burned down to grey ash and glowing hot, close under the meat. On a gas grill or an oven broiler, that is full heat with the grate or rack set 3-4 inches from the element.
- The wire broilerPeriod wire broilers were gridirons, often a hinged double grid that held the meat so it could be turned in one motion. A grill basket does the same job; a very hot cast-iron grill pan is the indoor equivalent.
- Five minutes is total, not per sideFive minutes is most likely total, not per side -- the recipe does not say. Inch-thick tenderloin over a hot fire wants about two to three minutes a side, turned once, for rare to medium-rare. Tenderloin has almost no fat and dries out fast past 130-135F internal; take it off early and let it rest five minutes.
- The oil and acidThe olive oil and lemon or vinegar are a seasoning and a browning aid, not a tenderiser -- tenderloin needs none. One to two hours at cool room temperature is right; longer in acid softens the surface unpleasantly. Pat the slices dry before they meet the fire or they will steam rather than sear.
- SaltThe recipe gives none. Season generously with salt just before broiling, or an hour ahead if you prefer a dry brine.
- The saucesTomato Sauce and Okra and Tomato Sauce are separate entries elsewhere in the book. Any plain cooked tomato sauce, thin enough to pour, does the same work; the point is acidity against very lean beef.
- YieldFigure one slice per person, two for large appetites. A whole trimmed tenderloin of 4-5 lb gives eight to ten slices.
The title Hot Weather Dishes is generally associated with Sarah Tyson Rorer of the Philadelphia Cooking School, who published a book under that name in the late 1880s -- part of a small genre of summer cookery aimed at households with no refrigeration and a coal range that turned the kitchen into an oven. The logic of that kind of book fits the recipe: broiling could be done outdoors or on the range top rather than in a heated oven, the cooking took five minutes rather than two hours, and the accompaniment was a tomato sauce made from fruit at its summer peak. Tenderloin suited the season for the same reason -- lean, quick, and served without the heavier flour-and-butter gravies more usual in cold-weather cookery. Okra with tomatoes reads as summer cooking too; both were high-season vegetables, and the pairing was well established in Southern and Creole kitchens.