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Chateaubriand of Beef
Cut the desired number of thick slices from a tenderloin of beef, and slit each one nearly in halves; place a teaspoonful of beef marrow seasoned with salt and cayenne and a few strips of onion in this cavity, pressing the sides together, and brush over with warm butter or oil; place on a warm gridiron over a clear fire for ten minutes. Remove, dish and squeeze a little lemon juice over them, serving as hot as possible. Care should be taken to prevent the marrow from oozing out during the process of cooking. Corned Beef, American Style Soak the desired quantity of corned beef, and put on to boil in fresh cold water; skim well and simmer until done and tender. Allow it to become cool in the liquor in which it has been cooked, and then before quite cold put in a flat hollow dish and cover with a board, pressing it with a weight. Remove all the fat from the meat liquor and save it, but take care that it is not allowed to stand in an iron vessel. Have ready boiled two or three beets, small carrots, a small cabbage, some turnip and potatoes, and a small squash; wash them well and scrape the carrots, cut the cabbage into quarters, pare the turnips and squash, and cut into slices, and pare the potatoes. Place the meat liquor on to boil about two hours before required, and when it boils put in the carrots, cabbage and turnips, and half an hour before dinner add the squash and potatoes. When tender, take up the vegetables carefully, and drain on a colander, slicing the carrots. Place the cold meat in the center of a large dish, and serve the carrots, potatoes and turnips around the edge, with the squash, cabbage and beets in separate dishes.
Two dishes run together in one block of type: a grilled stuffed tenderloin and a New England boiled dinner built on corned beef. Both are workable, but the timings and one warning about metal need translating.
- The hinge: keep the marrow inThe slit steak has to be pressed firmly closed and handled once, not flipped repeatedly. A short trussing string or two toothpicks through the seam holds it while the outside sets; once a crust forms the marrow stays put.
- Beef marrowNot a retail item. Ask a butcher for split marrow bones and scoop the soft interior out raw, or soak whole bones in cold salted water for a few hours, then push the marrow out. Since the recipe uses only a teaspoonful per slice, one large bone gives plenty for several steaks.
- "A warm gridiron over a clear fire"A clean, preheated grill grate over coals that have burned down past the flame stage. Ten minutes total suits a slice around an inch and a half thick and lands near rare; go by an instant-read thermometer, 125-130F for rare to medium-rare, and rest five minutes.
- Chateaubriand portionsOscar's version is a per-person steak, not the large center-cut roast carved at table that the name usually means now. Figure 8-10 oz of trimmed tenderloin per person.
- Soaking the corned beefNineteenth-century corned beef came out of a heavy brine barrel and needed hours of soaking. Supermarket corned beef brisket is mildly cured and vacuum-packed; rinse it and skip the soak, or soak an hour at most.
- Simmering time"Until done and tender" for a 3-4 lb brisket is roughly 3 to 4 hours at a bare simmer, never a rolling boil. It is done when a fork slides in and out with no resistance.
- Why not an iron vesselThe saved cooking liquor is salty enough to attack bare cast iron or unlined steel, which can leave it tasting metallic. Store it in glass, stainless or enamel.
- The vegetablesBeets are boiled separately in the original, and should stay that way or everything on the plate turns pink. Two hours in the liquor will destroy carrots, cabbage and turnip cut to modern sizes; add them 30-40 minutes before serving and the squash and potatoes 20-25 minutes before.
- Served coldNote that the pressed brisket goes to the table cold while the vegetables are hot. Pressing under a weighted board overnight in the refrigerator gives the firm, sliceable block Oscar wanted; if you would rather eat it hot, skip the pressing and slice it straight from the pot against the grain.
Chateaubriand takes its name from François-René de Chateaubriand, the writer and diplomat of the Napoleonic era, and the dish is traditionally credited to his cook Montmireil, though the attribution is repeated far more often than it is documented. By the time Oscar Tschirky, the celebrated maître d'hôtel of the Waldorf, compiled his 1896 book, the name may already have loosened to mean almost any thick cut from the head of the tenderloin, which would explain the plural "slices" here, though this one recipe is thin evidence for it. The marrow stuffing belongs to the same French repertoire that gave us marrow on toast and bordelaise sauce: marrow was cheap, rich and prized for the way it melts into lean beef. The corned beef dinner that follows shows the other half of the Waldorf's audience. It is a New England boiled dinner, plain American cookery down to the squash and beets, set on the page beside a French grill without apology.