No. 1434

Tournedos of Tenderloin of Beef a la Laguipierre

Tournedos de Filet de Boeuf a la Laguipierre

Cut off slices from a nice small tenderloin of beef, pare well, and beat lightly to flatten to a quarter of an inch thick, trim them round-shaped two and a quarter inches in diameter; they should weigh after being pared two ounces each; season them with salt and pepper, then lay them on a dish and pour over some Madeira wine, letting them macerate for one hour turning them over several times; drain and wipe them nicely. Put some clarified butter into a saucepan, when very hot set in the tournedos one beside the other, place the pan on a hot fire, and cook them the same as the plain tournedos (No. 1430). Drain off the butter, put in a little clear gravy (No. 404) and meat glaze (No. 402), reduce the liquid quickly, turning the tournedos over to glaze them. Prepare beforehand slices of unsmoked red beef tongue, two inches in diameter by a quarter of an inch thick, also some round slices of foies-gras, one and a half inches in diameter by three-sixteenths of an inch, and rounds of truffles one inch by an eighth of an inch in thickness. Dress the tournedos on slices of bread a quarter of an inch thick, and two and a half inches in diameter; these slices to be fried in butter; lay on top of each one a tournedos, and on these the foies-gras, and finally the round slice of truffle. Pour over a Laguipierre sauce (No. 486).

← No. 1433 Tournedos of Tenderloin of Beef a la Hutchin Beef No. 1435 Tournedos of Tenderloin of Beef a la Mariett →

For the Modern Kitchen

A composed garnished medallion from Ranhofer's The Epicurean, built on four cross-references the reader is assumed to have to hand. Everything here hinges on the fact that a quarter-inch medallion cooks in about ninety seconds.

The hinge: cooking timeTwo-ounce medallions pounded to a quarter-inch thick cook very fast in hot fat. Ranhofer gives no times, sending you to No. 1430 for the method, and the glazing step that follows adds further heat, so pull them while still rare inside.
Clarified butterNot a flourish. Whole butter will burn black at the heat needed to sear these in seconds; clarified butter (or ghee) takes it. Milk solids removed, it smokes around 400-450F.
The cross-referencesNo. 404 is a clear gravy, No. 402 a reduced meat glaze (glace de viande), No. 486 the Laguipierre sauce itself. Without the book, a good veal or beef demi-glace stands in for the first two; what goes into No. 486 is not stated here, so any substitute for the sauce is conjecture.
Unsmoked red beef tongueMost likely brined (saltpetre-cured) tongue, cooked and cooled until sliceable, sold in some delicatessens as pickled or corned tongue; smoked tongue is the wrong flavour here. The recipe has you prepare the slices and then never says where they go.
Foie grasRanhofer means cold cooked foie gras or a terrine, sliced thin, laid on warm beef so it softens rather than melts. Raw lobes will render into fat at this thickness. Sale is restricted in some jurisdictions; a fine chicken-liver parfait is the usual substitute.
TrufflesThe recipe calls for one round slice, an inch across and an eighth of an inch thick, per tournedos; preserved truffle is the practical substitute. Add it at the last moment, off the heat.
The croutonsQuarter-inch rounds of firm white bread, cut a quarter-inch wider than the beef so the edge shows, fried in butter until crisp and drained. Cut them before the beef goes in the pan; they go soft if they sit under sauce for long.
The Madeira macerationOne hour, as the recipe says, at cool room temperature, and the meat must be wiped genuinely dry before searing or it will steam instead of brown. Ranhofer does not say what to do with the drained Madeira.
YieldTwo ounces trimmed per medallion means two to three per person as a main course, one as a small plate. How many rounds a small tenderloin gives depends entirely on how much is pared away; the recipe does not say.

A Little History

Laguipierre was a real chef, not a place: he is said to have cooked for Napoleon and later for Murat, and is generally traced through Carême, who called him a master and mourned him after he died in the retreat from Russia in 1812. Dishes bearing his name in nineteenth-century French kitchens tend to be rich, Madeira-scented and heavily garnished, and Ranhofer — Delmonico's chef in New York, publishing The Epicurean in 1894 — inherited that vocabulary wholesale. The tournedos itself was a relatively new cut in the period, carved from the thinner middle portion of the tenderloin and made fashionable in Paris mid-century; its whole logic is speed on a hot range, which is why the elaborate part of the recipe is the assembly rather than the cooking. The stacked construction of crouton, tongue, beef, foie gras and truffle is characteristic of restaurant service at the time, when each plate was a small piece of architecture and the garnish told the diner which name the dish carried.