No. 1431

Tournedos of Tenderloin of Beef a la Bretigny

Tournedos de Filet de Boeuf a la Bretigny

Prepare and cook the tournedos as for plain (No. 1430); glaze them, then lay them on a dish, one slice overlapping the other. Split through the back as many reedbirds as there are tournedos, preparing them as follows: Bone them, season with salt, pepper, saute them on a quick fire while the tournedos are being prepared. Garnish one side of the meat with sweetbread minced and fried in butter with fine herbs and lemon juice, and the other side with sliced mushrooms, fried in butter with fine herbs (No. 385) and lemon juice, dress the reedbirds on both ends. Pour a little Madeira sauce (No. 492), with truffle essence (No. 395) into the bottom of the dish, and serve some of the same sauce in a separate sauce-boat.

← No. 1430 Tournedos of Tenderloin of Beef, Plain Beef No. 1432 Tournedos of Tenderloin of Beef a la Flavign →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

The beef, sweetbread and mushroom elements of this dish are ordinary restaurant work, but the garnish is not: reedbirds are bobolinks, and killing or possessing them is illegal in the United States and Canada.

Reedbirds cannot be obtained legally"Reedbird" in nineteenth-century American markets meant the bobolink, netted in enormous numbers in the rice and reed marshes of the Atlantic coast during autumn migration. Bobolinks are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 and its Canadian counterpart; taking, possessing, buying or serving them is a federal offence. There is no lawful supply, wild or farmed.
The rest of the dish is not the problemTournedos, glaze, minced sweetbread, mushrooms and a Madeira sauce with truffle essence are all still perfectly makeable. It is the garnish alone that puts the recipe out of reach, and it is the garnish that the dish is named for. If you want a composed tournedos of this type, work from a current recipe rather than adapting this one.
Sweetbreads need advance work the text assumesThe recipe says only "sweetbread minced and fried in butter," assuming the cook already has sweetbreads soaked, blanched, pressed and trimmed by the usual method; no cross-reference is given here. Bought fresh, they are perishable and require that preparation; they are also a specialty-butcher item now rather than a staple.
"Fine herbs" and "truffle essence"Fines herbes in this period means a mince of fresh herbs, classically parsley with chervil, tarragon and chives, not a dried blend; No. 385 gives the book's own mixture, which should be checked rather than assumed. Truffle essence was the strained cooking liquor of truffles, kept as a flavouring; nothing sold as truffle oil today is the same thing.
Madeira sauce means a real demi-glaceNo. 492 is built on the house espagnole reduced with Madeira. The dish depends on that reduction for body and gloss; a wine-and-stock pan sauce is a different preparation, not a shortcut to the same result.
Glazing the tournedosTo "glaze" here is to brush the cooked slices with reduced meat glaze (glace de viande) and pass them under heat until shining, not to coat them in a sweetened liquid.
ScaleThe recipe fixes only one reedbird for each tournedos, with the slices overlapped on the platter and the garnish flanking the row. It is written for restaurant service, so quantities are left entirely to the cook.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) records the kitchen of Delmonico's in New York under Charles Ranhofer, and its beef chapter runs through tournedos dressed in a long series of named styles, each a permutation of garnish and sauce built on the same plain preparation. Reedbirds appear in a number of places in the book because they were then a genuine market commodity: bobolinks fattened in the rice fields and tidal reed marshes of the Atlantic coast were shot and netted in quantity during the late-summer and autumn migration and sold by the dozen in city markets, and American cookbooks of the period treat them much as European ones treat larks and ortolans, split, boned and served whole as a small luxury. Their disappearance from cookery follows the collapse of market hunting and the protective legislation of the 1910s, culminating in the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918. The name "a la Bretigny" follows the French convention of attaching a place or personal name to a fixed garnish; no particular commemoration is traceable here.