No. 1466

Tenderloin of Beef with Vegetables—Whole

Filet de Boeuf aux Legumes--Entier

Prepare and cook the tenderloin exactly as for a la Bienvenue (No. 1445); after having it pared and glazed, set it on a small rice foundation, garnishing it around with the following vegetables arranged in separate groups in order to vary their different colors. This dish can be decorated with pear-shaped carrots, small clusters of cauliflower, turnips cut into balls, artichoke bottoms garnished with Brussels sprouts, small glazed onions or any other vegetable in season, being careful to suppress any kind that will be served at the same dinner, and which has intentionally been avoided in this, such as asparagus tops, for there is seldom a dinner when this vegetable is not served in some way or the other, either as cream soup, or plain boiled. Also green peas, string beans and flageolets, these all being generally used as vegetables served with the entrees. Mushrooms are also employed largely for garnishing, and boiled potatoes are invariably served with fish. Send a sauce-boat of half-glaze sauce (No. 413) to the table, the same time as the tenderloin.

← No. 1465 Tenderloin of Beef with Truffles—Whole Beef No. 1467 Beef Tongue a la Romaine →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a plating formula more than a cooking method: the beef is cooked elsewhere (No. 1445), and what Ranhofer sets out here is how to dress a whole tenderloin for a table where a dozen other dishes are already in play. The hinge is the rule buried in the middle of the paragraph — choose the garnish by what the rest of the menu does not contain.

The cross-references"A la Bienvenue" (No. 1445) is the parent recipe for the whole tenderloin; by the time it reaches this entry it has been pared and glazed, and the actual cooking instruction lives on that page, not this one. No. 413 is the half-glaze sauce named in the text — demi-glace, a reduced brown sauce. Without those two pages this entry gives you no cooking instruction at all, so treat it as a garnish and service plan for a roast you already know how to make.
Cooking the beefA trimmed whole tenderloin of 4–6 lb roasts at 425F to an internal 125–130F for rare, which is what a glazed presentation piece wants. Rest it 15–20 minutes before paring; the thin tail end should be tucked and tied so the piece cooks evenly.
"Glazed" means two different things hereThe beef is glazed with meat glaze — reduced stock brushed on for shine. The onions and root vegetables are glazed in the French sense: cooked in a little water with butter and sugar until the liquid reduces to a syrup that coats them.
The rice foundationA socle: stiff boiled rice packed into a mold, turned out, and used as a low pedestal to raise the meat above the platter. It was structural and decorative rather than eaten. A plain long oval platter does the same job now, and skipping it costs you nothing but height.
Pear-shaped carrots and turnip ballsTurned vegetables, cut with a small knife or a parisienne scoop. The point is uniform size so each group cooks evenly and reads as a distinct block of color on the platter. Cook each vegetable separately; a mixed pot muddies both timing and color.
FlageoletsSmall pale-green shelling beans, still sold dried in French groceries. Ranhofer excludes them here only because they were the standard accompaniment to entrées earlier in the meal.
Artichoke bottomsThe trimmed base of a large globe artichoke, cooked in acidulated water or a blanc. Frozen or jarred bottoms are an acceptable substitute; canned hearts are not the same cut and will collapse under Brussels sprouts.
YieldA whole tenderloin dressed this way would serve roughly 10–12 as one course of a longer dinner, and rather fewer if it is the only meat on the table. The recipe gives no quantities, so judge the vegetable groups by what fills the platter around the meat.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York and published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete working system rather than a book of favorites, which is why so many entries, like this one, are variations keyed by number to a parent recipe. The whole glazed tenderloin ringed with separately cooked vegetables in tidy groups is classical grand-platter presentation at its most confident: the platter goes to the table as a composed object, and its value lies as much in the contrast of colors as in the eating. The instruction to suppress any vegetable appearing elsewhere in the meal is the most telling line on the page, from times of many courses planned as a whole, in which asparagus was common enough that Ranhofer treats its possible presence somewhere on the menu as worth guarding against, and it reminds the reader that boiled potatoes belonged with fish and were not to wander onto the beef.