No. 2320

Potted Tenderloin of Beef a la Nelson

Terrine de Filet de Boeuf a la Nelson

To prepare this dish it will require a covered pie dish which can stand the heat of the oven. Cut slices from a well-trimmed tenderloin of beef free of sinews, and season them with pepper and salt; cover the bottom of the pie dish with a layer of good butter, spread over this some minced onions, and on the onions a bed of minced potatoes. Season with salt and pepper, and set the slices of tenderloin on top. Place the pie dish over a hot fire for a few minutes, then put it into a moderate oven for forty-five minutes; add a tablespoonful of clear gravy (No. 404), and the same quantity of meat glaze (No. 402), Worcestershire sauce, and mushroom catsup; sprinkle over the surface chopped hard-boiled eggs and parsley. Serve it on a dish over a folded napkin.

← No. 2319 Woodcock Pie—Hot Miscellaneous Entrées No. 2321 Poulpetonniere of Pigeons →

For the Modern Kitchen

A layered oven dish of beef, onion and potato with English seasonings, from Charles Ranhofer's Delmonico's kitchen. The method is sound; the timing is the part that needs judgment.

The vesselA "covered pie dish which can stand the heat of the oven" is a lidded earthenware or enamelled casserole, or a small Dutch oven. It goes on direct heat first and then into the oven, so it must tolerate both.
Moderate ovenThe book gives no figure; by the usual modern equivalence a "moderate" oven is around 325-350F. Nineteenth-century ranges held heat less steadily than a modern oven, so treat both the reading and the timing as approximate.
Forty-five minutes and the tenderloinThe hinge of the dish. Three-quarters of an hour at 350F will take sliced tenderloin well past grey. Cut the slices thick, around an inch, and treat the timing as belonging to the potatoes; check the beef well before the time is up, or sear the slices and add them partway through.
Clear gravy and meat glazeNo. 404 is the book's clear gravy, in effect a clarified brown stock, and No. 402 is glace de viande, stock reduced to a syrupy, jellied concentrate. Substitute a strong unsalted brown stock and a spoonful of commercial demi-glace or reduced stock; commercial glazes and demi-glace can be very salty, so season the layers with that in mind.
Mushroom catsupA thin, dark, salty mushroom-and-spice liquid, not tomato ketchup. Bottled mushroom ketchup is still made in Britain; a spoonful of soy or a strong mushroom essence stands in tolerably.
The potato layer"Minced" here means finely chopped or shredded rather than ground. Sliced thin on a mandoline works better in practice, since a thick raw-potato bed will not cook through in the time given.
FinishingThe gravy, glaze, Worcestershire and catsup all go in at the end, so they season rather than braise. Add them off the heat, then scatter the chopped egg and parsley just before serving.
Serving and yieldServing on a folded napkin was a standard nineteenth-century presentation for dishes brought to table in their cooking vessel: it steadies the hot dish on the platter and absorbs drips. The recipe gives no quantities, so any yield is an estimate; a dish built from about 1 1/2 lb of trimmed tenderloin would serve roughly four.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty years at Delmonico's in New York, and Beef Nelson appears in its "Miscellaneous Entrées" chapter. Beef Nelson is generally said to honour Admiral Horatio Nelson, and the dish is seasoned with Worcestershire sauce and mushroom catsup. The same combination of sliced beef, onion and potato baked under a lid survives in Denmark as Nelson-bøf, which suggests a shared nineteenth-century European ancestor rather than a Delmonico's invention. Ranhofer's cross-references to numbered stocks and glazes are a reminder of how a brigade kitchen worked: the elaborate part of the flavour was made days earlier, in quantity, and the entrée itself was an assembly.