No. 1435

Tournedos of Tenderloin of Beef a la Marietta

Tournedos de Filet de Boeuf a la Marietta

Have the tournedos prepared the same as for a la Laguipierre (No. 1434); set them on a dish over round slices of bread cut the same diameter as the tournedos, fried in butter, and a quarter of an inch thick. Cover them with port wine sauce (No. 492) into which mix some finely chopped up shallots previously blanched, some finely cut and chopped oronge mushrooms, nutmeg, espagnole sauce (No. 414), lemon juice, and pistachio nuts cut in fillets. Garnish around with timbales made of short paste (No. 135), filling them either with noodles or parboiled macaroni, drained and reduced with broth (No. 194a), seasoning with pepper, nutmeg and parmesan cheese, also some butter and veloute (No. 415). Between each timbale lay slices of tongue cut the shape of cock's-combs, and warmed in butter, then glazed.

← No. 1434 Tournedos of Tenderloin of Beef a la Laguipi Beef No. 1436 Tournedos of Tenderloin of Beef a la Roquepl →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a plated assembly from Ranhofer's Delmonico's kitchen, written for cooks who already had stock sauces standing by. The steaks themselves are simple; everything difficult is in the garnish and in the cross-references.

The recipe is deliberately incompleteNo. 1434 supplies the tournedos themselves, and Nos. 492, 414, 415, 194a and 135 are the port wine sauce, espagnole, veloute, broth and short paste. Without those pages this is a plan, not a set of instructions.
The hinge: cook the beef rare and sauce it at the last momentThe hinge: cook the beef rare and sauce it at the last moment. Ranhofer gives no times or temperatures; in a modern kitchen a couple of minutes a side in hot butter, to roughly 125-130F, will do it. Everything else in the dish is built ahead and held warm, and the longer the sauced steaks stand the softer the fried croutes beneath them become.
Oronge mushroomsThe oronge is Amanita caesarea, Caesar's mushroom, a wild species prized in France and Italy and effectively unbuyable fresh outside its range. Do not attempt to substitute a foraged lookalike: the genus also contains the death cap and the fly agaric. Chanterelles, or good brown cremini, give the texture the recipe wants.
Two mother sauces, one dishEspagnole is the brown veal-stock sauce thickened with brown roux; veloute here is the pale version made on white stock. The espagnole in particular was a long job in a professional kitchen. A well-reduced veal or beef demi-glace stands in for the espagnole, and a quick roux-thickened chicken stock for the veloute.
Blanching the shallotsDropping the chopped shallots into boiling water for a minute before they go into the sauce takes off the raw sulphurous edge without cooking them to nothing. It matters because they are added to a finished sauce rather than sweated at the start.
The croutesCut the bread rounds to the exact diameter of the steaks and a quarter inch thick, as the recipe specifies, and fry them in butter. Their job is to absorb the juices the beef gives up on the platter.
Timbale casesThese are small moulds lined with short pastry and baked blind, then filled e2 80 94 not the modern baked custard sense of the word. The macaroni filling is finished risotto-fashion: parboiled pasta reduced in broth with butter, parmesan, pepper and nutmeg until it binds.
Cock's-comb tongueCooked, peeled beef or veal tongue sliced thin and cut into a scalloped fan shape, warmed in butter and brushed with reduced glaze until it shines. Purely decorative geometry, and easily replaced by simple batons if the shape does not interest you.
YieldRanhofer gives none. Scale it to the number of timbales you want around the dish and judge the tenderloin accordingly.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it reads like a working kitchen's index rather than a home cookbook e2 80 94 hence the constant numbered cross-references, which assume a brigade with sauces already in the pot. The tournedos itself is a nineteenth-century French coinage of uncertain date and origin, a round from the heart of the tenderloin, and by Ranhofer's day it had become the standard vehicle for exactly this kind of composed garnish: a croute beneath, a rich reduction over, and a ring of small hot pastries around the platter. Dish names like c3 a0 la Marietta were often personal dedications to a patron, a performer or an occasion, and Ranhofer rarely explains them; no documented origin for this one survives, so the name is best read as a house label distinguishing one port-wine-and-mushroom treatment from the dozens of others in the same section.