No. 1411

Noisettes of Tenderloin of Beef a la Berthier

Noisettes de Filet de Boeuf a la Berthier

Prepare the noisettes as for No. 1410, set them in an earthen dish, then season them with salt and mignonette, oil, vinegar, thyme, bay leaf, sprigs of parsley and sliced onions. Leave them in this pickle for three hours, then drain the pieces, wipe dry, and saute them with butter on a hot fire. When done dress them over a tomato sauce (No. 549) with horseradish, stirring in a little finely chopped blanched and lightly fried shallots. Stuff some Spanish olives with anchovies, put them in sheets of buttered paper, warm them in a slow oven, remove the papers, glaze the olives, and garnish the noisettes with these. Three olives are sufficient for each noisette.

← No. 1410 Noisettes of Tenderloin of Beef, Plain Beef No. 1412 Noisettes of Tenderloin of Beef a la Bonnefo →

For the Modern Kitchen

A short marinade, a hard sear, and a garnish that is really a separate small operation. The only tricky part is timing the olives so they are warm when the beef comes off the pan.

What a noisette isBoneless rounds cut from the trimmed tenderloin, roughly 1 1/2 to 2 inches across and about 1 inch thick. Trim them neatly and flatten only slightly; do not pound them thin or they will overcook before they colour.
MignonetteCoarsely cracked peppercorns, white pepper in Ranhofer's usage, crushed rather than ground. Crack it yourself under a pan bottom; pre-ground pepper gives none of the intended texture.
"This pickle" is a marinadeOil, vinegar, herbs and onion for three hours; the recipe gives no temperature. Refrigerate it now, and hold the salt back until just before cooking — three hours of salt plus acid draws out moisture you want for the sear.
Dry the meat properlyThe instruction to drain and wipe dry is the hinge of the dish. Marinated beef put wet into butter steams instead of browning, and the vinegar will scorch. Blot each piece on both sides and let it sit uncovered a few minutes before it meets the pan.
Sauteing on a hot fireButter alone over high heat will blacken; add a spoonful of oil, or use clarified butter. Two to three minutes a side gives rare to medium-rare on a 1-inch noisette. Rest them while you finish the sauce.
The sauceNo. 549 is Ranhofer's tomato sauce — a cooked tomato puree enriched with stock. A good thick tomato sauce works; whisk in prepared horseradish off the heat so it keeps its bite, along with the shallots, which should be blanched a minute in boiling water and then fried gently in butter without colouring much.
Buttered paper for the olivesParchment, buttered, folded into a loose packet — the period equivalent of an en papillote. A slow oven is about 300F; ten minutes is enough to warm stuffed olives through. "Glaze" means to roll them in a little reduced meat glaze or thick veal stock for shine.
Olives and yieldLarge Spanish queen olives, pitted and stuffed with anchovy fillet or paste — the same thing sold ready-stuffed today, though homemade with good anchovy is better. Three per noisette, as the recipe states; it gives no number of noisettes and no serving count.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of some thirty years' cooking at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry shows how his book worked: a long run of numbered variations on one cut, each distinguished by a garnish and a sauce, so that a kitchen could produce a different tenderloin dish every night of a season. Named preparations like a la Berthier are generally traced to the French practice of honouring a patron, a colleague or a public figure, but Ranhofer names no one, and in a book with well over a thousand such titles many were simply inherited from Paris kitchens or coined in-house. What is distinctly of its moment is the seasoning: a vinegar marinade, horseradish stirred into tomato sauce, and anchovy-stuffed Spanish olives together make a plate far sharper and saltier than the cream-and-truffle register usually associated with Gilded Age restaurant beef.