No. 1446

Tenderloin of Beef a la Cauchoise—Whole

Filet de Boeuf a la Cauchoise--Entier

Have prepared and cooked a tenderloin as explained in a la Bernardi (No. 1444); when done and glazed, dress it and garnish it around with cabbage. Lay on top of the cabbage, slices of sausage, decorate the ends with turnips cut cork-shaped, blanched and cooked in beef stock (No. 194a) with butter and sugar, and then reduced to a glaze; serve a separate espagnole sauce (No. 414), reduced with some clear gravy (No. 404).

How to Prepare the Cabbage.—Mince two cabbages, blanch them for ten minutes, drain and place them in a saucepan covering them with some beef stock (No. 194a) with one third of the volume of fat taken from the stock pot; add one pound of sausage, a carrot cut lengthwise in four, and two medium onions with two cloves in them, also a bunch of parsley garnished with bay leaf. Season with salt and pepper, cook slowly, remove all the fat and let reduce to a half-glaze.

← No. 1445 Tenderloin of Beef a la Bienvenue—Whole Beef No. 1447 Tenderloin of Beef a la Chanzy—Whole →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade that already has stock, glaze and espagnole standing by, and he expects you to look up three other numbered recipes to finish one dish. Here is what the shorthand assumes.

The hinge: cook the tenderloin by temperatureA whole trimmed tenderloin (4–5 lb) roasted at 425F takes roughly 30–40 minutes to reach 125–130F at the thick end for medium rare, and the thin tail will always be further along. Rest it 15 minutes before slicing; the cabbage and sauce can wait indefinitely, the beef cannot.
What the cross-references meanNo. 1444 (à la Bernardi) is the base preparation for the tenderloin; consult that entry for the cooking method. Glaze here is stock reduced to a syrup, not a sugar glaze. No. 414 espagnole is a brown sauce built on a brown roux and stock; a good demi-glace or a well-reduced brown sauce stands in.
"Reduced with some clear gravy"No. 404 is Ranhofer's clear gravy, a brown meat juice prepared in its own right rather than merely the pan drippings; a strong degreased jus is the practical stand-in. Add it to the espagnole and reduce until it coats a spoon.
Cork-shaped turnipsCylinders about an inch across and an inch and a half tall, cut from peeled turnip. Blanch, then simmer in beef stock with butter and a spoonful of sugar until the liquid reduces to a shiny glaze that clings — 15–20 minutes for that quantity.
The fat from the stock potSkimmed beef fat, a third the volume of the stock used on the cabbage. It is a large amount by modern habit; the instruction to remove all the fat before serving is the corrective. Half that quantity, or a few ounces of butter, gives the same effect.
The sausageA plain fresh pork sausage, poached whole in the cabbage and then sliced — closest to a French saucisse à cuire or a Polish fresh kielbasa. Do not use a cured, smoked or heavily seasoned sausage; it will dominate the braise.
Cabbage timingTen minutes' blanching, then a slow braise of about an hour until the stock is down to a half-glaze — thick enough to coat the shreds with nothing loose in the pan. Two cabbages will feed a crowd; one is enough alongside a single tenderloin.
YieldA whole tenderloin with this garnish serves 8 to 10 as a main course. The onions studded with cloves, the quartered carrot and the parsley bundle are aromatics and are removed before serving.

A Little History

Cauchoise means from the Pays de Caux, the chalk plateau of Upper Normandy above the Seine estuary. The pairing of braised cabbage and fresh sausage with a piece of roast beef is peasant food dressed for the dining room and carved, the cabbage moulded around it, the turnips turned to identical cylinders and glazed to a shine. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete working reference, which is why this entry is one of a long numbered run of whole tenderloins, each distinguished only by its garnish. Named garnishes were the grammar of the period's grand service: a cook who knew what à la Cauchoise meant needed no further description, and the numbering let him find the base preparation in the same volume.