Home › Beef › Broiled Fillets of Beef
Broiled Fillets of Beef
Slices cut from the tenderloin are called sliced fillets of beef. Wipe sliced fillets, place in greased broiler, and broil four or five minutes over a clear fire. These may be served with Maître d'Hôtel Butter or Mushroom Sauce.
Cutlets of Tenderloin with Chestnut Purée Shape slices of tenderloin, one inch thick, in circular pieces. Broil five minutes. Spread with butter, sprinkle with salt and pepper. Arrange on platter around a mound of Chestnut Purée.
Sautéd Mignon Fillets of Beef with Sauce Figaro Wipe and sauté small fillets in hot omelet pan. Arrange in a circle on platter with cock's-comb shaped croûtons between, and pour sauce in the centre. Serve as a luncheon dish with Brussels Sprouts or String Beans.
Sautéd Mignon Fillets of Beef with Sauce Trianon Wipe and sauté small fillets in hot omelet pan. Arrange in a circle around a mound of fried potato balls sprinkled with parsley. Put Sauce Trianon on each fillet.
Sautéd Fillets of Beef à la Moelle Cut beef tenderloin in slices one inch thick, and trim into circular shapes. Season with salt and pepper, and broil six minutes in hot buttered frying-pan. Remove marrow from a marrow-bone, cut in one-third inch slices, poach in boiling water, and drain. Put a slice of marrow on each fillet. To liquor in pan add one tablespoon butter, two tablespoons flour, and one cup Brown Stock. Season with salt, pepper, and Madeira wine. Pour sauce around meat.
Sautéd Fillets of Beef, Cherry Sauce Prepare and cook six fillets same as Sautéd Fillets of Beef à la Moelle. Arrange on serving dish, sprinkle with salt and pepper, spread with butter, and pour over.
Cherry Sauce. Soak one-fourth cup glacéd cherries fifteen minntes in boiling water. Drain, cut in halves, cover with Sherry wine, and let stand three hours.
Sautéd Fillets of Beef with Stuffed Mushroom Caps Prepare and cook six fillets same as Sautéd Fillets of Beef à la Moelle omitting the marrow. Put a sautéd stuffed mushroom cap on each, sprinkle with buttered crumbs, and bake until crumbs are browned. Remove to serving dish, pour around Espagnole Sauce, and garnish caps with strips of red and green pepper cut in fancy shapes.
Stuffing for Mushroom Caps. Clean and finely chop six mushroom caps; add one tablespoon each of parsley and onion finely chopped, and one tablespoon butter. Moisten with Espagnole Sauce (See p. 200).
Châteaubriand of Beef Trim off fat and skin from three pounds of beef cut from centre of fillet and flatten with a broad-bladed cleaver. Sprinkle with salt, brush over with olive oil, and broil over a clear fire twenty minutes. Remove to serving dish, garnish with red pepper cut in fancy shapes and parsley. Serve with Espagnole Sauce. To one and one-half cups rich brown sauce add two-thirds teaspoon meat extract, one tablespoon lemon juice, and one and one-half tablespoons finely chopped parsley. Just before serving add one tablespoon butter and salt and pepper to taste.
A cluster of tenderloin preparations from the French-restaurant end of Fannie Farmer's repertoire, written for cooks who had a coal range and a set of mother sauces on hand. The instructions assume knowledge the book supplies elsewhere; the timings assume beef served rare.
- Doneness is the hingeFour to six minutes total for a one-inch tenderloin slice is rare to the point of blue by modern habit — the book expects it that way. Cook to an internal 125-130F for rare, 135F for medium-rare, and let the fillets rest three or four minutes before saucing.
- "A clear fire"Coals burnt down past the smoking stage, with no flame licking the meat. A charcoal grill at high heat or a preheated broiler element with the rack close beneath is the equivalent; a screaming-hot cast-iron pan gives a better crust indoors.
- "Broil in a hot buttered frying-pan"Farmer uses "broil" loosely for pan-searing over direct heat. The Moelle, Cherry and Mushroom Cap fillets are all pan-cooked, not grilled, despite the word.
- Omelet panA shallow, heavy, sloping-sided iron pan kept smooth for eggs. Any heavy skillet that holds heat works; nonstick will not brown a fillet properly.
- MarrowAsk a butcher to split the marrow bones lengthwise so the marrow can be pushed out whole. Poach the slices in barely simmering water for a minute or two only — at a hard boil the marrow melts away.
- Glacéd cherriesCandied cherries, not maraschino. The boiling-water soak presumably softens them and rinses off surplus syrup before the three-hour sherry maceration; start that step first, as it takes longer than the rest of the dish.
- Meat extractThe concentrated beef paste sold as Bovril or Liebig's. A teaspoon of demi-glace concentrate or a crumbled half-cube of beef bouillon does the same job in the Espagnole; season afterwards, as both carry salt.
- Sauce quantitiesThe pan sauce for the fillets à la Moelle makes a scant cup — one tablespoon butter to two of flour is a stiff roux, so whisk the brown stock in gradually or it will lump. Madeira goes in off the heat.
- Cock's-comb croûtonsBread cut into a serrated fan shape and fried in butter, a standard garnish of the period. Plain triangles serve the same purpose.
- YieldThe Cherry Sauce and Stuffed Mushroom Cap versions specify six fillets; the others give no number, and the Figaro version is offered as a luncheon dish. The Châteaubriand, three pounds from the centre of the fillet, is a roast for four to six, carved across the grain in thick slices.
Châteaubriand is generally traced to the kitchen of François-René de Chateaubriand, the writer and diplomat, and credited by tradition to his chef Montmireil in the 1820s — the story that the thick centre-cut steak was originally cooked between two lesser steaks that were then discarded is repeated everywhere and documented nowhere. What is certain is that by 1896, when the Boston Cooking School Cook Book first appeared, the whole vocabulary on this page — Figaro, Trianon, à la Moelle, Espagnole, mignon fillets ringed around a mound of something — belonged to French restaurant cookery as it was practised in the grand hotels of Paris, London and New York. Fannie Farmer's achievement was to hand that vocabulary to a middle-class American household with one cook and a coal range, alongside the plain boiled dinners in the same chapter. The tenderloin was already the expensive cut, and the marrow bone, the candied cherries in sherry and the peppers cut in fancy shapes mark these as company dishes rather than weeknight ones.