No. 1383

Double Chateaubriand, Two and a half Pounds with Souffled Potatoes

(Chateaubriand Double de Deux Livres et Demie aux Pommes Soufflees).

Season well the meat with salt, rub sweet oil over both sides, and broil on a slow, regular fire; for rare, twenty minutes; properly done, twenty-six minutes, and well done, thirty minutes. It is preferable to broil it on a double-hinged broiler without pressing it down, and turning over when half cooked. When done, set it on a large hot dish, spread over some maitre d'hotel butter (No. 581), letting the dish be sufficiently large to contain a quantity of souffled potatoes (No. 2808). It is better to serve a single Chateaubriand, for the excessive thickness of a double one renders the cooking of it doubtful, yet it is a dish epicureans frequently call for.

← No. 1382 Chateaubriand Maitre d'Hotel Sauce, Thickene Beef No. 1384 Grenadins of Tenderloin Plain Five Ounces →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a thick center-cut tenderloin roast cooked over live fire, and Ranhofer himself warns that the double size makes the interior a gamble. A probe thermometer settles what his timings cannot.

The cutA Chateaubriand is cut from the thick head of the beef tenderloin. A "double" of two and a half pounds will be roughly three inches thick; ask for a center-cut tenderloin roast rather than steaks, and tie it if it is uneven.
Sweet oilSweet oil means olive oil, the mild table grade rather than anything peppery. Any neutral high-heat oil serves the same purpose here, which is to keep the surface from sticking and to encourage browning.
Trust the thermometer, not the clockTwenty minutes for rare assumes a specific bed of coals and a specific thickness, neither of which you have. Pull the meat at 120-125F internal for rare, 130-135F for medium, checked at the thickest point; that is the one instruction that matters on a piece this thick.
A slow, regular fireHe means a moderate, even bed of coals with no flare-ups, so the heat can reach the center before the crust burns. On a gas grill use medium and indirect heat, or cook the roast in a 275F oven and finish it over high heat for the crust.
Double-hinged broilerA hinged wire grill basket that closes over the meat and lets you flip the whole thing without stabbing it. Not pressing it down is the point: pressure drives out juices. Modern tongs do the job if you turn only once, at the halfway mark.
RestingThe book says nothing about resting, but a three-inch roast needs ten to fifteen minutes off the heat before carving, or the juices run out onto the platter. Carve across the grain into thick slices.
The two cross-referencesNo. 581, maitre d'hotel butter, is softened butter worked with chopped parsley, lemon juice, salt and pepper, then chilled and sliced. No. 2808, souffled potatoes, are thin potato slices fried twice: first in moderately hot fat until they blister and puff, then in much hotter fat to set and colour them.
YieldTwo and a half pounds of trimmed tenderloin with potatoes will serve four generously, six at a formal table with other courses.

A Little History

Chateaubriand is generally traced to the household of the writer and diplomat François-René de Chateaubriand in the 1820s, the dish credited by tradition to his cook Montmireil; the story is repeated in nineteenth-century French cookbooks more often than it is documented. What the name settled into meaning was a thick center-cut piece of tenderloin, grilled and served with maitre d'hotel butter or a reduced shallot sauce, carved at table for two or more. Ranhofer, who ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York, includes both a single and a double version and then quietly tells the reader the double one is a bad idea — an unusually candid note in The Epicurean (1894), and a reminder that the book was written for a restaurant where regular customers ordered by size and spectacle as much as by sense. The whole plate is a good picture of what a Gilded Age steak course looked like: one expensive muscle, one compound butter, and one piece of fryer's showmanship.