Fillet of Beef
The tenderloin of beef is known as the fillet.
Trim into shape a fillet of beef weighing about four pounds, removing tendinous portions and veins. Tie and skewer into a pear-shaped piece. Lard top; sprinkle with salt and pepper, and dredge with flour. Cover the bottom of a small dripping pan with cubes of salt pork. Set trivet on top of pork, and meat on trivet. Bake from twenty to thirty minutes in hot oven, basting frequently. Serve with gravy made from fat in pan, flour and hot water. Same as recipe for brown gravy, under Roast Beef.
A whole trimmed tenderloin roasted hot and fast, with salt pork doing the work that a splash of oil does now. The instructions are sound; only the vocabulary and the doneness cues need translating.
- Hot oven means 425–450°FHot oven -- The book never puts numbers to its oven terms; "hot oven" in period usage is generally taken as somewhere around 400–450°F, and that high heat is what makes the short roasting time work. A moderate 350°F oven will not brown the exterior before the centre overshoots.
- Cook to temperature, not to the clockTwenty to thirty minutes for four pounds is realistic only for a thin, well-trimmed tenderloin at full heat. Pull it at 125–130°F in the thickest part for rare to medium-rare; the tapered tail will always be more done than the butt.
- Rest before carvingThe original says nothing about resting. Ten to fifteen minutes under loose foil keeps the juices from running out onto the board.
- Larding and its modern substituteLarding means threading strips of pork fat through the lean meat with a larding needle, which few kitchens own. Barding — laying thin sheets of fatback or unsmoked bacon over the top and tying them on — gives the same basting effect and comes off before serving.
- Dripping pan and trivetA dripping pan is a shallow roasting pan; the trivet is simply a rack. The salt pork cubes underneath render and flavour the drippings, and stop the meat stewing in its own juices.
- Trim the silverskin"Removing tendinous portions" covers the silverskin, the iridescent membrane along the top of the tenderloin, along with other connective tissue. It does not break down in half an hour of roasting and will contract and warp the roast if left on.
- The pear shapeTucking the thin tail under and tying the whole thing at intervals gives an even thickness so the ends do not overcook. Butcher's twine at one-inch intervals is enough.
- Gravy proportionsThe brown gravy recipe itself sits elsewhere in the book; a workable ratio is two tablespoons of the pan fat to two of flour, cooked together until nut-brown, then about a cup of hot water or stock whisked in. Water is what this recipe calls for; stock makes a better sauce.
- YieldA four-pound trimmed fillet serves eight to ten generously, which suits the multi-course dinners this book was written for.
The fillet — from the French filet, a diminutive of fil, thread — is the psoas muscle running along the inside of the spine, and it was the cut American cookbooks of the 1890s and 1900s reached for when a dinner needed to look expensive. Lowney's Cook Book (1907), written by Maria Willett Howard and published by the Walter M. Lowney chocolate company, is best remembered for its confectionery, but it carried a full complement of household recipes so it could sit on the kitchen shelf all year. The larding here is the older technique showing through: tenderloin is very lean, and cooks relied on inserted or draped pork fat to keep a fast-roasted piece from drying out. The salt pork in the bottom of the pan does double duty, greasing the pan and building the fond for the brown gravy sent to table alongside.