No. 2255

Cutlets of Tenderloin of Beef a la Babanine

Cotelettes de Filet de Boeuf a la Babanine

Cut up in squares a pound of raw tenderloin of beef, well-trimmed and free of all fat and sinews, then chop it up very fine. Chop separately a quarter of a pound of beef-marrow, then chop the two together. Season with salt, pepper and nutmeg; mix in slowly half a pint of cream while continuing to chop; roll out and flatten a small ball of this hash, place it in the oven to try its consistency; if the preparation be too firm add a little more cream, if too soft a few raw eggyolks. Divide the preparation into eight equal parts, roll each one separately on a table dredged with rice flour, shape them like cutlets, arrange them on a buttered pan, pour over a little melted butter, and cook in a quick oven for six or eight minutes. Serve separately a Lithuanian sauce (No. 487).

← No. 2254 Cupola of Codfish a la Biscayan Miscellaneous Entrées No. 2256 Cutlets of Tenderloin of Beef a la Bienville →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

A chopped-steak cutlet in the Delmonico manner: rich, pale, and cooked fast in a hot oven rather than seared in a pan. The whole thing turns on the consistency of the forcemeat, which is why Ranhofer has you bake a test patty before shaping.

Do the test pattyThe proportion of cream to meat cannot be fixed in advance, since marrow and cream both vary. Flatten a small ball, bake it a minute or two, and judge: too firm means more cream, too slack means a yolk or two. Skipping this step is how the cutlets end up either dry or spreading into puddles.
Half a pint of creamOne US cup, added gradually while chopping so it emulsifies into the meat rather than pooling. Use heavy cream; modern light cream and half-and-half carry less fat and will slacken the mixture without enriching it.
A quick ovenRoughly 400-450F; the book gives no temperatures, so this is an approximation. The cutlets are thin and want fast heat so the outside sets before the cream-loosened interior overcooks. Six to eight minutes at that heat is plausible.
Beef marrowA quarter pound is roughly the yield of two or three large cut marrow bones; ask a butcher for canoe-cut or 2-inch sections. Push it out cold and firm, and chop it cold, or it smears. There is no substitute that behaves the same way, though a little finely chopped beef suet is closer than butter.
Chopped, not groundHand-chopping with two knives, or short pulses in a food processor with the meat well chilled, gives the loose open texture the dish depends on. A meat grinder plate, and certainly supermarket ground beef, packs the fibres and yields something closer to a hamburger.
Rice flour on the boardRice flour is used because it does not develop gluten or gum up as wheat flour does against a wet forcemeat. It is sold in most supermarkets and in every Asian grocery; cornstarch is the nearest stand-in.
DonenessChopped raw beef baked six to eight minutes will likely be pink to rare inside. The recipe says nothing about doneness, so this is worth knowing before you serve it; if you want the interior above 160F you will need thinner cutlets and will lose much of the point of the dish.
The sauce and the yieldSauce No. 487, the book's Lithuanian sauce, is a cross-reference you will need the full volume to follow. Eight cutlets serve four as a course; anything sharp and creamy - sour cream with horseradish, or a mustard-spiked velouté - suits the richness.

A Little History

This comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous compendium of the kitchen he ran at Delmonico's in New York, where he was chef for some thirty years. The form resembles the Russian pojarski cutlet - chopped meat bound with cream and butter or marrow, shaped to imitate a bone-in chop and often crumbed - and the accompanying "Lithuanian" sauce points in a Russian direction. Who or what à la Babanine honours is not recorded; the name has left little trace outside these pages. The reliance on beef marrow as the enriching fat is characteristic of the period, when marrow bones were cheap and plentiful.