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Filet Mignons, Bearnaise Sauce
Neatly trim two pounds filet of beef, then cut in six even pieces, flatten and season with teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper, lightly rub them with a little oil, arrange on broiler and briskly broil three minutes on each side. Remove, arrange six freshly prepared round toasts on a dish and lay filets on top. Pour a Bearnaise sauce over filets, pour half a gill of hot tomato sauce around and serve.
A straightforward broiled tenderloin, but the recipe assumes you already have two sauces standing ready and gives no clue about doneness. A few notes before you start.
- Half a gillA gill is half a cup, so half a gill of tomato sauce is 4 tablespoons — a spoonful poured around each portion, not a pool. It is there for colour and acidity against the butter sauce.
- Make the sauces firstNeither sauce is written out here; both are separate entries in the book. Have the béarnaise finished and held warm (not hot, or it will split) and the tomato sauce simmering before the beef ever touches the broiler.
- What "filet mignon" means hereIn period usage this is any small round cut from the tenderloin, flattened. Two pounds cut into six gives roughly 5 oz portions; ask for centre-cut tenderloin and press each piece to about 1 inch.
- Broiling three minutes a sideThat assumes a fierce coal or gas broiler at close range. Under a modern broiler set as high as it goes, with the rack near the element, 3 minutes a side on a 1-inch flattened filet lands around rare to medium-rare. Go by feel or an instant thermometer — 125-130F for rare, 135F for medium-rare — rather than the clock.
- Rest the meatThe recipe moves straight from broiler to toast to sauce. Give the filets two or three minutes on a warm plate while you arrange the toast, or the juices will run out and soak the bread through.
- The toasts"Freshly prepared round toasts" are croûtes: rounds of firm white bread cut to the diameter of the filets and toasted or fried in butter. Cut them slightly wider than the meat so the sauce has somewhere to land.
- Holding the béarnaiseAn egg-and-butter emulsion breaks above about 160F. Keep it off direct heat in a warm bowl and whisk in a teaspoon of warm water if it begins to tighten.
- YieldSix servings as written — a main course with a green vegetable or potatoes.
Béarnaise belongs to the family of warm egg-and-butter emulsions codified in nineteenth-century French professional kitchens, and its name is generally traced to the Béarn region of southwest France, birthplace of Henri IV, though the sauce itself is traditionally credited to French restaurant cooking of the 1830s rather than to any regional tradition — a story that is repeated more often than it is documented. Tarragon and chervil in a vinegar-and-shallot reduction are what distinguish it from a plain hollandaise. The plating here — meat on a fried or toasted bread round, sauce over, a contrasting sauce poured around — is characteristic hotel-kitchen practice of the period: the croûte keeps the portion off the plate and absorbs juices, and the ring of tomato sauce supplies colour. That this appears in a book called The International Cook Book says a good deal about how thoroughly French restaurant technique had come to stand in for haute cuisine generally in American kitchens by the early twentieth century.