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Chateaubriand Grille
Carefully trim off skin from two and a half pounds tenderloin of beef. Envelop it in a clean towel in standing-up position and neatly flatten to thickness of an inch and a half with a cleaver. Mix on a plate a table-spoon oil with a teaspoon salt and a half teaspoon pepper, repeatedly turn beef in seasoning, then arrange on a broiler and broil on a lively charcoal fire ten minutes on each side. Place on a clean roasting pan, pour a Chateaubriand sauce over it, then set in oven ten minutes longer, being careful to turn and baste once in a while with the sauce. Remove, dress on a hot dish, pour sauce over and serve.
A straightforward grilled tenderloin, written for a coal-fired range and a cook who already knew what Chateaubriand sauce was. The menu text tacked on the end belongs to the book's daily bill of fare, not to this dish.
- The cutTwo and a half pounds of trimmed tenderloin is the thick centre section, the chateaubriand proper. Ask for a centre-cut piece and have the silverskin removed, which is the "skin" the recipe means.
- Flattening in a towelStanding the meat on end and striking it with a cleaver to an inch and a half gives an even slab that cooks at one rate. A heavy pan works as well; the towel presumably kept the surface from tearing, though the recipe does not say why.
- A lively charcoal fireThis means a bed of coals burned down to grey ash with no flame, hot enough that a hand cannot stay four inches above it. A gas grill on high or a very hot ridged pan will do, but the charcoal is part of the flavour the recipe is after.
- Ten minutes a side is a guide, not a ruleTwenty minutes of direct heat plus ten in the oven will take a piece this size well past rare on modern equipment. Cook to internal temperature instead: 125F for rare, 130-135F for medium-rare, pulling it several degrees short since it climbs while it rests.
- Oven temperatureFilippini gives none. A hot oven, around 400F, matches the intent of finishing quickly in the sauce rather than continuing to cook the meat through.
- Chateaubriand sauceThe classic version is white wine reduced with shallots, mounted with demi-glace, butter, lemon and chopped tarragon. Have it made before the beef goes on the fire; the ten minutes in the oven is for glazing, not for building a sauce.
- Rest before carvingThe recipe sends it straight to the dish. Give it five to ten minutes off the heat, then carve across the grain in thick slanting slices and pour the sauce over at the table.
- YieldTwo and a half pounds of trimmed tenderloin serves four generously, six as part of a longer menu of the kind printed alongside it.
Chateaubriand is named for François-René de Chateaubriand, the writer and diplomat of the Napoleonic era, and the dish is traditionally credited to his cook Montmireil in the 1820s, though the attribution is repeated far more often than it is documented. What defines it is the cut rather than the cooking: a thick centre section of the fillet, grilled or roasted whole and carved at table for two or more, which by the later nineteenth century had become a fixture of restaurant French. Alexander Filippini, long of Delmonico's in New York, put it in The International Cook Book among hundreds of numbered dishes cross-referenced to a day-by-day calendar of menus — the reason a Decoration Day breakfast of strawberries and smelts has attached itself to the end of the text here. The instruction to broil over charcoal is worth noting: in a professional kitchen of 1906 the charcoal broiler was standard equipment, and grilled meats were expected to carry its smoke.