No. 1371

Small Sirloin Steak a la Bordelaise with Marrow

Bifteck de Contrefilet a la Bordelaise et a la Moelle

Cook a small sirloin steak as for No. 1368, then arrange it on a very hot dish and cover with a sauce prepared as follows: Cut four ounces of beef marrow into quarter-inch thick slices, plunge them into boiling water, then drain. Dress them on the steak and cover with a Bordelaise sauce (No. 436).

← No. 1370 Small Sirloin Steak a la Bordelaise Beef No. 1372 Small Sirloin Steak a la Bordelaise with Mar →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes you already have a broiled steak and a pot of Bordelaise on hand; the only real cooking here is the marrow, and it is easy to ruin. A few notes on the parts the cross-references hide.

What cut this isContrefilet is the boneless strip loin — what a US butcher sells as New York strip or shell steak. "Small" here simply indicates a single-portion steak; the recipe specifies neither weight nor thickness.
The missing recipe (No. 1368)The referenced preparation is a plainly cooked steak; the text of it is not reproduced here, so the details are not recoverable from this page. Nothing in this dish depends on it beyond good browning; for a modern cook, 125-130F internal for medium-rare and a 5-minute rest.
Blanching the marrowThis is the hinge. The recipe says to plunge the slices into boiling water; in practice many modern cooks slip them into water just off the boil and hold them a minute or two, until just translucent and firm, since hard boiling can render marrow to fat.
Getting the marrowFour ounces is the yield of two to three 3-inch center-cut beef femur sections. Ask the butcher for marrow bones cut crosswise, push the marrow out whole (soaking the bones in cold salted water overnight loosens it and draws out blood), then slice into quarter-inch rounds.
Bordelaise sauce (No. 436)Not reproduced here; in this period a Bordelaise is generally a red Bordeaux reduction with shallot and aromatics worked into espagnole or demi-glace. A modern equivalent is a shallot-and-red-wine reduction finished with veal stock reduced to a glaze; skip the flour-based espagnole if you have good stock.
"A very hot dish"Not a flourish. Marrow congeals and the sauce stiffens on a cool plate, so warm the platter (a low oven will do) while the steak rests.
YieldOne steak, one serving. Note that the recipe calls for a full four ounces of marrow for that one steak; scale down if you want the marrow to read as garnish rather than as fat.

A Little History

Ranhofer wrote The Epicurean (1894) out of some thirty years running the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry shows how his book actually worked: a numbered grid of steaks, sauces and garnishes that a brigade could recombine on demand, each recipe pointing to two or three others rather than repeating itself. The name marks the pairing of red Bordeaux with beef, and à la moelle means with marrow; poached marrow rounds laid over grilled meat were a standard French garnish well before the nineteenth century, valued because marrow melts into a sauce and enriches it without the sauce being made richer in advance. Here the marrow is blanched separately and only laid on at the pass.