No. 1432

Tournedos of Tenderloin of Beef a la Flavignan, with Small Stuffed Tomatoes

Tournedos de Filet de Boeuf a la Flavignan, avec Petites Tomates Farcies

Prepare the tournedos exactly the same as for the plain (No. 1430), glaze and dress them in a straight row one overlapping the other; garnish the sides of the dish with as many small tomatoes as there are pieces of meat, and serve a Colbert sauce (No. 451) separate.

Small Stuffed Tomatoes.—Cut off the tops half an inch in diameter, and scoop out the interiors; squeeze them without misshaping them, and remove the insides with a small vegetable scoop. Rub lightly the bottom of a bowl with some garlic, and for half a pound of chicken forcemeat (No. 89), placed in the bowl, mix in the same quantity of foies-gras taken from a terrine; add a quarter of a pound of mushrooms and two ounces of chopped truffles, salt, pepper, nutmeg, chopped parsley, a little Madeira wine, and grated parmesan cheese. Fill the tomatoes with this preparation and bake them in a moderate oven for twenty minutes.

← No. 1431 Tournedos of Tenderloin of Beef a la Bretign Beef No. 1433 Tournedos of Tenderloin of Beef a la Hutchin →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade that already has stock, forcemeat and sauces standing by, so this entry is really an assembly note plus one genuine sub-recipe. The stuffed tomatoes are the part worth cooking.

What a tournedos isA round cut from the beef tenderloin, trimmed clean and often tied; restaurant sizes vary, commonly an inch or more thick and a few ounces each. No. 1430 is the plain version Ranhofer refers back to. If you want it rare to medium-rare, an internal temperature of roughly 125-130F is the usual modern target.
"Glaze" is not sugarGlace de viande, meat stock reduced to a syrup, brushed over the hot beef for shine and depth. A commercial demi-glace or a heavily reduced beef stock does the same job.
The cross-referencesNo. 89 is Ranhofer's chicken forcemeat; a modern chicken mousseline (breast, egg white, cream, blitzed cold) substitutes cleanly. No. 451, Colbert sauce, is in its standard form a meat-glaze-based sauce mounted with butter and finished with lemon, chopped herbs and Madeira.
Foies-gras from a terrineHe means cooked foie gras terrine, not raw lobe, so it is folded in already seasoned and will melt into the forcemeat. Half a pound of it against half a pound of forcemeat makes a very rich stuffing; a mousse de foie gras behaves much the same.
Mushrooms and trufflesThe quarter pound of mushrooms should be cooked down dry before it goes in, or the filling will weep in the oven. Two ounces of chopped truffle is a period luxury; a teaspoon of truffle paste or simply more mushroom is the honest modern move.
Moderate ovenRanhofer gives no figure; 'moderate' is conventionally read as around 350F today, for the stated twenty minutes. That should set a raw-chicken forcemeat in a small tomato shell; check that the centre reaches 165F before serving.
Preparing the shellsSmall, firm tomatoes of even size. Cut a half-inch lid, scoop with a melon baller, salt the insides and drain them upside down for ten minutes, then fill. The instruction to squeeze without misshaping means pressing out seeds and juice while keeping the round.
The garlicRubbing the bowl only is deliberate. The filling should carry a trace of garlic behind the truffle and Madeira, not taste of it.
YieldThe listed quantities come to about 1 lb 6 oz of filling, which should fill something in the region of a dozen small tomatoes; that number, by Ranhofer's own instruction, sets the number of tournedos and so the number of guests.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York in two spells, roughly 1862-1876 and 1879-1896, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially that restaurant's working repertoire set down in several thousand numbered, cross-referenced entries. The tournedos itself is a mid-nineteenth-century French restaurant cut, small and quick-cooking, suited to a la carte service in a way that a whole roast fillet is not, and Ranhofer gives it dozens of garnishes distinguished only by what sits beside it and what sauce goes in the boat. Names like "a la Flavignan" functioned as menu shorthand rather than history: a fixed combination the kitchen could reproduce on demand, here beef, a foie gras and truffle stuffed tomato, and Colbert sauce. The Colbert name is generally traced to the seventeenth-century minister and, like Soubise or Colbert's contemporaries elsewhere on the menu, was attached to the sauce long after the fact. What the entry really documents is the pantry of a wealthy American restaurant at the end of the century, where terrine foie gras and chopped truffle were ordinary garnish stock.