No. 1439

Tournedos of Tenderloin of Beef with Raisins

Tournedos de Filet de Boeuf aux Raisins

These are to be prepared and cooked as for tournedos Laguipierre (No. 1434); reduce a gill of tomato sauce (No. 549), with one gill of espagnole (No. 414), and half a gill of Madeira wine; when all is well reduced, strain it through a very fine sieve, put it back into the saucepan, and add to it eight fresh Malaga raisins for each piece of meat, or in case there are none fresh, then use dried ones, seeded and softened in a little Malaga wine. Dress the tournedos on slices of bread their same diameter, and a quarter of an inch thick, fried in butter, set the raisins around, and serve with the sauce poured over.

← No. 1438 Tournedos of Tenderloin of Beef a la Victori Beef No. 1440 Tournedos of Tenderloin of Beef with String →

For the Modern Kitchen

A short garnish-and-sauce recipe that leans on two cross-references, so the work is mostly in the sauce base. Everything hinges on reducing the tomato and brown sauce far enough that it coats without needing thickener.

A gillHalf a cup, so the sauce starts from one cup of combined sauces plus a quarter cup of Madeira. The recipe gives no yield and no number of pieces; the quantities scale by the eight raisins allowed for each piece of meat.
EspagnoleRanhofer's No. 414 is a classic brown sauce: brown roux, brown stock, mirepoix, simmered and skimmed for hours. A well-reduced dark veal or beef stock does the same job here, since the sauce is reduced again anyway and needs no flour body.
Cross-reference to No. 1434Tournedos Laguipierre supplies the cooking method: small rounds cut from the tenderloin, trimmed, seasoned and sautéed. The exact thickness and handling are as given at No. 1434, which is not reproduced here. If you cook to a thermometer, 125-130F gives rare to medium-rare; rest them while you finish the sauce.
Malaga raisinsFresh Malagas are large muscat grapes, sold in the period on the stem in cork-packed cases; supermarket muscat grapes are the nearest thing. The dried version is the big amber muscat raisin, and it does need the soak the recipe calls for or it will pull moisture out of the sauce.
MadeiraUse a dry to medium Madeira such as Sercial or Verdelho. Sweet Malmsey plus sweet raisins will push the sauce toward dessert.
StrainingThe strain through a fine sieve is not optional finesse: it removes tomato seeds and skin so the glaze is smooth. Strain first, then add the raisins, or you will fish them out again.
The croutonsCut bread rounds to the exact diameter of the meat and a quarter inch thick, fry in butter until crisp on both sides, and drain. Their purpose is to keep the beef out of the sauce; soggy ones defeat the whole arrangement.
ServingThe recipe does not state a yield; it is written per piece of meat, with eight raisins ringing each tournedos.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) records the kitchen of Delmonico's in New York, and this entry shows how such a book was built: a base preparation is described once, then varied dozens of times under different garnishes. Tournedos itself is a nineteenth-century French butchery term for the small rounds cut from the thin end of the fillet, and the fruit-and-Madeira treatment belongs to a long line of sweet-savory sauces. The specification of Malaga grapes is a period detail worth noticing: Spanish muscats, shipped fresh in sawdust or ground cork and sold at a premium in American cities, were exactly the sort of luxury import a Delmonico's customer was paying for, and Ranhofer's clause permitting dried ones to be substituted marks the difference between the restaurant and the home kitchen.