No. 1438

Tournedos of Tenderloin of Beef a la Victorin

Tournedos de Filet de Boeuf a la Victorin

Prepare and cook the tournedos exactly the same as for Laguipierre (No. 1434). lay them on top of pieces of thin bread, cut the same diameter as the tournedos, and cover them with a thick celery puree (No. 711); place on top a ring cut from a carrot, two inches in diameter, and a quarter of an inch thick, with an empty space in the center of an inch and a quarter, blanched, braised, and reduced to a glaze; set on a top large mushroom stuffed with fine cooked herbs (No. 385) thickened with allemande sauce (No. 407), and baked in the oven till a fine color. Pour around an espagnole sauce (No. 414), reduced with sherry wine, and when ready to serve incorporate into it a piece of good butter, working it in well with a whisk (Fig. 154).

← No. 1437 Tournedos of Tenderloin of Beef a la Talabas Beef No. 1439 Tournedos of Tenderloin of Beef with Raisins →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is an assembly recipe rather than a cooking one: Ranhofer assumes you already have the sautéed tournedos, the celery purée, the duxelles, and two mother sauces on hand, and gives you only the order of stacking. Read it as a plating diagram and work backwards.

What a tournedos isA round steak cut from the heart of the beef tenderloin, roughly 2 inches across and 1 to 1 1/4 inches thick, 4 to 5 oz each. This entry gives no cooking method of its own; it defers entirely to the Laguipierre recipe (No. 1434). Cook to 125-130F internal for rare to medium-rare, since the steak will sit under hot garnish and sauce and will carry over.
The croutons"Pieces of thin bread cut the same diameter" is all Ranhofer says; the usual reading is croutons of firm white bread crisped in butter and drained. Cut them with the same cutter used for the steaks so the tower lines up. Soft modern sandwich bread collapses under the puree; use a dense loaf.
Allemande sauceA veloute finished with egg yolks and cream, and the one component here that will break. Add the yolk liaison off the boil and never let the sauce return to a simmer afterward. A well-reduced veloute with cream is a steadier substitute in the oven and binds the duxelles just as well.
Fine cooked herbsRanhofer's No. 385 is a duxelles-type preparation of finely chopped mushrooms and herbs cooked down dry; the details belong to that entry rather than this one. It must be genuinely dry before the binding sauce goes in, or the filling weeps into the celery puree under the oven heat.
The carrot ringA 2-inch disc with a 1 1/4-inch hole punched out, blanched, then braised in stock and reduced until the liquid coats it with a shine. Use large, straight carrots; ordinary supermarket carrots rarely run 2 inches across, and roasted swede or a slice from the widest end are the practical fallbacks.
The finishing butterEspagnole reduced with sherry, then monté au beurre: cold butter whisked in with the pan off the heat. If the sauce boils after the butter goes in it will separate, and the gloss that is the entire point of the step is lost.
Oven stage"Baked in the oven till a fine color" means a brief pass in a hot oven -- Ranhofer specifies no temperature -- or a few seconds under the broiler, purely to glaze the stuffed mushroom cap. The steak is already cooked and should not be sitting in heat for more than three or four minutes.
Yield and serviceOne tournedos per person as a course in a longer menu, two for a main plate. Sauce is poured around the base, never over the tower; the whole construction is meant to be seen.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is the record of that operation: nearly 3,500 numbered items designed to be recombined, which is why this entry is mostly cross-references. Tournedos garnishes were the great showpiece of late nineteenth-century restaurant cooking, each one named for a person, a place or a colleague, and Ranhofer's book carries dozens of them in a row — Laguipierre, Talabas, Victorin, with raisins — differing only in what is stacked on top of the crouton. Who Victorin was is not recorded in the book, and such names were often given to a patron, a chef, or an occasion without explanation; the neighbouring Laguipierre commemorates the chef who served Napoleon and Murat and died in the retreat from Moscow. The architecture here — meat on fried bread, vegetable purée, a glazed vegetable ring, a stuffed mushroom crowning the whole — belongs to a period when a plate was expected to be built vertically and carved down through, before the simplifications that followed the First World War made such towers look laborious.