No. 1444

Tenderloin of Beef a la Bernardi—Whole

Filet de Boeuf a la Bernardi--Entier

Prepare and lard a fine tenderloin as already explained (No. 112). Garnish the bottom of a pan with slices of pork, minced carrots and onions, and place the tenderloin on top; cover it with some good fat and put it in a very hot oven to roast; the time for accomplishing this is thirty minutes for a four pound tendrloin, then let it rest on a heater or in any warm place for ten minutes or longer; five pounds will take thirty-five minutes, and twelve minutes to rest, while six pounds will take forty-five minutes and fifteen minutes to rest. As soon as the tenderloin is nearly done, salt it properly, before serving pare both ends, remove the chain, give it a good appearance, glaze, then dress it on a grooved rice foundation, previously browned in the oven. Dress around the tenderloin small croustades made of fine foundation paste (No. 135) laid into deep tartlet molds: fill these croustades with a little macedoine thickened with butter and a little bechamel (No. 409), over this macedoine set a round game forcemeat quenelle, (No. 91) forced through a cornet on a buttered tin sheet quenelle, being the same in diameter as the croustades; put in the center of each a ring of thinly sliced truffle, then poach them in a slow oven serve separately a sauce Perigueux (No. 517), adding to it some small one-eight inch squares of cooked ham.

← No. 1443 Tenderloin of Beef a la Bayonnaise—Whole Beef No. 1445 Tenderloin of Beef a la Bienvenue—Whole →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's roasting times assume a large coal-fired oven at full heat and a whole trimmed tenderloin served rare. The core technique is sound; most of the work is in the garnish, which can be pared back without harming the beef.

The hinge: cook to temperature, not the clockThirty minutes for four pounds is aggressive even for a hot oven, and a tenderloin has almost no margin between rare and grey. Use an instant-read thermometer in the thick end and pull at 120-125F for rare, 130F for medium-rare; the stated rest of ten to fifteen minutes will carry it several degrees further.
"A very hot oven"In modern terms roughly 450-500F. The high heat is what browns the surface in the short time available.
The bed of pork, carrot and onionThis is a rough mirepoix with fatback laid under the meat: it lifts the tenderloin off the hot metal and keeps the underside from scorching. Any roasting rack over the vegetables does the same job, and sliced fatty pancetta or salt pork substitutes for the pork slices.
LardingThe cross-reference at No. 112 covers preparing and larding the tenderloin: strips of chilled pork fat threaded through the meat with a larding needle. A tenderloin has no internal fat. Barding instead, wrapping a sheet of fatback or caul around the roast and tying it, is easier and nearly as effective.
"Remove the chain"The chain is the ropy side muscle running along the tenderloin. Modern butchers usually strip it before sale; if it is still attached, take it off before roasting rather than after, and save it for stock or a sauce.
Macedoine and the croustadesMacedoine is a small even dice of mixed vegetables — carrot, turnip, green beans, peas. The croustades are shortcrust shells baked blind in deep tartlet tins, so about 2 in. across. Bind the vegetables with butter and a spoon of bechamel, no more; the filling should hold together, not flow.
Quenelles and PerigueuxGame forcemeat quenelles piped from a cornet and poached in a slow oven, say around 300F, are a full sub-recipe in themselves. A firm game or chicken mousseline works, and sauce Perigueux is broadly a demi-glace finished with truffle and Madeira, here with a brunoise of ham stirred in.
The rice foundationA socle of stiff cooked rice, moulded, grooved and browned, used as an edible plinth. It is presentation only. A warmed platter loses nothing but the theatre.
YieldA four-pound trimmed tenderloin serves eight to ten as a main course; with the garnish, closer to twelve at a multi-course dinner.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer cooked at Delmonico's in New York for more than thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially the working repertoire of that kitchen written out in full thousands of numbered recipes cross-referencing one another, so that a single roast pulls in a foundation paste, a forcemeat, a bechamel and a truffle sauce from four other pages. The whole larded tenderloin, glazed and set on a browned socle with a ring of filled croustades around it, belongs to a tradition in which a roast arrived as an assembled centrepiece rather than as sliced meat. Names like a la Bernardi, a la Bayonnaise and a la Bienvenue sit consecutively in this section and mostly denote a particular garnish; some point plainly enough to a place, as a la Bayonnaise does to Bayonne ham, while others resist tracing. Ranhofer is often said to have inherited many of them from the French grande cuisine of Careme and Dubois and to have coined others for Delmonico's patrons. That whole tenderloins were roasted at all is itself a period marker beef is generally reckoned to have been cheap in New York in the 1880s in a way it had never been in Paris, and the most tender and least flavourful cut could be treated as the luxury item its price now makes it.