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Larded Tenderloin of Beef
Trim thoroughly a short tenderloin of beef, and dust with salt and pepper, and flour well; fasten it into shape with skewers, and lard it in two rows with strips of pork. Place in a bakingpan with any liquor, and bake for half an hour. It should first be placed in the coolest part of the oven for ten minutes, and then in the hottest for the remainder of the time. When done, dish and serve with Hollandaise or tomato sauce, or mushroom catsup. Minions of Tenderloin, Lorillard When the six timbales, as below described, have been prepared and taken from the oven, have in readiness six fine tenderloin minions and serve them with the following garnish: Procure six small timbale moulds about an inch and three-quarters in diameter by two inches deep, butter the insides and place them in an ice-box to become cold; then take one good sized cooked carrot, one cooked turnip, and cut them with a tube a quarter of an inch in diameter, by one inch in length; a medium sized white cabbage, with the outer leaves trimmed neatly, should also be placed in readiness. Then place in a stewpan an ounce of salt pork cut into small dice-shaped pieces, put in the cabbage and season with half a pinch of pepper, place the pan over a rather slow fire, cover it well, and cook gradually for half an hour without taking off the lid. While this is cooking decorate the six timbales by laying a slice of truffle half an inch in diameter at the bottom of each in the middle, and with a larding-needle arrange a row of cooked peas around this, decorate half the interior of the timbales with half of the carrots and turnips, and keep them all inclining slightly toward the right, and the other half toward the left; and then fill up the timbales with cooked cabbage, pressing it down gently, so as to fill the moulds entirely up to the top. Then put them on a roasting pan, fill with hot water to half the height of the timbales and put them in a hot oven for from three to four minutes, then remove from the oven and put the pan at the side of the stove so that it will keep just warm; cut an oval-shaped slice from an American loaf of bread about an inch in thickness, pare the edges neatly, and butter it thinly, and brown lightly in the oven, then lay it on a very hot dish, and dress the six minions on top of the bread croustade, each lengthwise and overlapping each other a trifle. Then pour over half a pint of hot Colbert sauce, to which may be added whatever parings of slices of truffle that remain about a minute before it is to be used; then with a towel remove the timbales from the pan one at a time; turn them upside down, unmould, and decorate the dish with them, placing one at either end and two at each side, when the dish should be sent to the table at once. Minions of Tenderloin, Pompadour Procure two and a half pounds of tender fillet of beef, pare it neatly all around and cut it up into six equal sized small fillets; flatten them slightly and equally and put them on a dish, season with a pinch of salt and half a pinch of pepper, then put them in a pan on a hot range with half a gill of clarified butter, allowing them to cook for four minutes on either side, next prepare a pint of Bearnaise sauce, dress three-quarters of it on a hot dish and reserve the other quarter for further use. Next lay six round-shaped pieces of bread croutons fried in butter over the Bearnaise sauce and dress the six fillets one on top of each crouton and fix six warmed artichoke bottoms right in the middle of the fillets; fill up the artichokes with a tablespoonful of hot jardiniere garnishing and evenly divide the remaining pint of hot Bearnaise sauce over the jardiniere, and then cut into six evenly shaped slices one good sized truffle and put one slice on the top of each in the center of the Bearnaise sauce, and serve as hot as possible. Minions of Tenderloin, Sauted Bearnaise Cut from the end of a tenderloin of beef some slices about five-eighths of an inch in thickness, trim and press them into circles and sprinkle over some salt and pepper, saute then in butter and spread some sauce Bearnaise on a hot dish and place the minions over, and serve.
Noisettes of Tenderloin of Beef, Plain After trimming the tenderloin of beef, cut it into slices and lightly flatten them to about three-eighths of an inch in thickness and trim them round. After this is done each one should weigh about three ounces; then salt them on both sides; place them in a saucepan over a hot fire together with a little oil and a similar quantity of butter and cook rapidly for five to seven minutes. When cooked put them on a plate, glaze and serve on a dish with a little gravy poured around.
Noisettes of Tenderloin of Beef, Rossini After preparing them exactly as for plain noisettes, glaze and place them upon small pieces of toast, about a quarter of an inch in thickness, and the same shape and size as the noisettes, and fry them in a little oil. Select some very large chicken livers, and cut them into pretty thick slices, and cook them in some butter in a pan; place a slice on each noisette, and then a round slice of truffle on this; cover the whole with Madeira sauce with a small quantity of essence of truffle added to it.
Noisettes of Tenderloin of Beef with Puree of Mushrooms. Prepare them the same as for plain noisettes, then glaze and lay them on round flat croustades made from parings of good puff paste, and decorate with mushroom puree.
Stewed Tenderloin of Beef with Oysters To each pound of tenderloin steak required, use one dozen oysters, as follows: Mix a little butter and flour together in a stewpan; peel and chop up a Spanish onion, cut up two pickled walnuts and place them in the stewpan, together with two tablespoonfuls of mushroom catsup and a teaspoonful of Worcestershire sauce. Put the steak in on top of these, and stew for an hour, turning every twenty minutes or so, but do not let it come to the boiling point. Open the oysters, remove their beards, strain the liquor through a sieve, and add them just before serving.
Tournedos of Beef, New York Style Cut from a cooked tenderloin of beef the requisite number of slices about half an inch in thickness and put them in a saucepan with sufficient water to cover them, warm on the side of the fire, but without boiling. Cut as many slices of bread to the same size and thickness as the meat and place them in a fryingpan with some fat skimmed off of stock and fry. Arrange the slices of meat and bread alternately around the dish, filling the center with cooked string beans or olives, and serve together with a sauceboatful of piquant sauce. Tournedos of Tenderloin of Beef, Plain These are prepared the same as noisettes of beef, but are smaller in size, weighing about two ounces instead of three as for the noisettes. Salt and pepper over and put them in some warm fat in a sautepan and cook over a brisk fire, turning them but once during the process of cooking, then drain, wipe and glaze them, pour a little clear gravy in the bottom of a dish, lay on the tournedos, and serve. They should be cooked from four to six minutes.
This is really a page of variations on one cut: the beef tenderloin, broken down from a whole roast to two-ounce tournedos, each with its own Gilded Age garnish. The recipes assume a brigade kitchen with sauces and stocks already standing, so read them as assemblies rather than as start-to-finish instructions.
- The hinge: internal temperature, not the clockA trimmed short tenderloin baked half an hour will only be correct if it is a small one and the oven is genuinely fierce at the end. Cook to 125-130F at the thickest point for medium-rare and rest it ten minutes; the roast will be ruined long before the half hour is up if it is a slim tail end.
- "Coolest part" then "hottest part"This is a coal-range instruction, and the effect resembles what is now called a reverse sear. The book names no temperatures; a slow start of perhaps 275-300F followed by 450-475F is one modern reading. In a modern oven you cannot move the pan to a hotter zone, so either raise the dial and accept the lag or finish the roast in a hot skillet.
- LardingStrips of pork fatback drawn through the meat with a larding needle, in two visible rows down the roast. Tenderloin is lean, and a common modern alternative is barding: sheets of fatback or thin-cut unsmoked bacon tied over the surface and removed before serving.
- "Any liquor"Means any moistening liquid on hand in the kitchen, usually stock or the previous roast's pan juices, not spirits. A cup of beef stock in the pan is the intent.
- Minions, noisettes, tournedosAll are steaks cut from the tenderloin, distinguished largely by size. The book gives noisettes at about three ounces and tournedos at about two; it states no weight for minions. The Pompadour recipe's two and a half pounds cut into six gives portions of roughly six and a half ounces, more generous than the book's own stated weights elsewhere.
- GillHalf a cup. Half a gill of clarified butter is four tablespoons, which is a great deal for six steaks; two will do the pan.
- Vanished pantry itemsMushroom catsup is a thin, dark, salty mushroom extract, once as common as Worcestershire and now a specialist buy or a home project. Pickled walnuts are still made in Britain and sold in jars. Essence of truffle was a bottled infusion; truffle paste or a few drops of a reputable truffle product stands in, and fresh mushroom duxelles is more honest than cheap truffle oil.
- Rossini and its liverThe book calls for very large chicken livers, which is the economical version; the garnish as it is usually written uses a slice of foie gras seared in butter. Cook the liver through and set it on the steak at the last moment.
- Timbale moulds and croustadesThe Lorillard moulds are 1 3/4 inches across by 2 deep, roughly a 3-ounce dariole or a large muffin cup. The water bath is only there to warm the packed cabbage through, three to four minutes at 425F. A croustade here is simply a fried or oven-toasted bread base cut to the shape of the meat.
- The oyster stewKeeping the pan below boiling for an hour is the point of the dish, and the oysters go in for the last two or three minutes only. Held longer they shrink and turn rubbery. "Remove their beards" means trimming the dark frill of mantle from each one.
- YieldEach of the garnished recipes serves six as written. A short tenderloin of about two pounds serves four.
Oscar Tschirky was not a chef but the Waldorf's maître d'hôtel, and his 1896 book reads like an inventory of what a first-class New York hotel kitchen could put on a plate in the last years of the century, sauces and garnishes catalogued the way Escoffier was then beginning to codify them in France. The naming tells you who the room was for: the Lorillard garnish honours the New York tobacco family whose members were fixtures of Newport and Manhattan society, while Pompadour borrows the name of Louis XV's mistress in the same decorative spirit that produced Rachel, Rossini and a hundred other garnitures named for patrons and celebrities rather than for anything in the dish. Beef tenderloin suited that trade exactly: expensive, boneless, quick to portion, and bland enough that the truffle, the artichoke bottom and the Béarnaise did the talking. The larding needle and the strips of pork are a reminder that fat was often put into a roast rather than trimmed off it.