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Filet Mignons, Belmont
Neatly trim a little fat off a two-pound piece tender filet of beef, then cut it in six equal pieces, season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper. Thoroughly heat one tablespoon fresh butter in frying pan, arrange filets in one beside another and briskly cook for three minutes on each side. Cut out from a sandwich loaf six slices a half-inch thick, cut in two-inch round pieces, lightly butter on both sides, place on a tin and set in oven for ten minutes or until a nice golden colour. Remove, spread a teaspoon pate de foie gras over each, arrange on a hot dish, place mignons on top of toasts, pour a Belmont sauce over and serve.
A steakhouse plate in miniature: seared filet on a buttered croûte with foie gras, sauced. The recipe assumes you have the book's Belmont sauce already made, so read that entry first or the dish stalls at the last line.
- The sauce is elsewhereBelmont sauce is a separate entry in the same book; look it up before you start, because nothing in this recipe tells you to make it, and it needs to be hot and ready before the beef goes in the pan.
- Portion sizeTwo pounds of trimmed tenderloin cut into six gives filets of about 5 oz each, roughly 1 to 1¼ inches thick. Enough for six, whether as a main course or as one course in a longer menu.
- Three minutes a sideThat timing suits a 1-inch filet in a properly hot pan and lands around medium-rare, 130F at the centre. Thicker cuts want a thermometer rather than the clock; tenderloin has no fat to forgive overcooking.
- One tablespoon of butterA single tablespoon for six steaks is thin coverage in a modern heavy skillet. Butter alone will also brown hard at searing heat — add a little neutral oil, or clarify the butter, if the pan is running very hot.
- The croûtes"Sandwich loaf" means a fine-crumbed white pan loaf. Half-inch slices cut into 2-inch rounds, buttered and oven-crisped, are croûtes; the recipe names no temperature, so use a moderate oven and go by the golden colour it asks for rather than by the ten minutes. Cut them slightly narrower than the filets so the meat sits proud.
- Pâté de foie grasAt this date this would generally have meant a smooth potted liver preparation, usually goose, sold in tins. A modern mousse or bloc de foie gras does the same job; a coarse country pâté does not. Spread it on the toast while the toast is warm but off the heat, so it softens without melting away.
- Assembly and timingEverything must meet hot: warmed platter, crisp croûtes, filets straight from the pan, sauce poured over at the table's edge. The croûte goes soggy within a few minutes of saucing, so this is not a dish to hold.
The International Cook Book came out of the Delmonico's tradition — its author, Alexander Filippini, spent decades in that kitchen — and the naming habit shows: dish after dish carries the surname of a New York patron, a hotel, or a room. Belmont may point to the Belmont banking family, whose members were fixtures of the restaurant and racing world in which these menus circulated, though the name could as easily attach to a hotel or a room; such names are often said to have flattered a regular rather than to have claimed authorship. The construction itself — a filet set on a fried or toasted croûte, topped with foie gras and finished with a brown wine sauce — is the pattern that classical French cookery codified as tournedos Rossini, and by the turn of the century American hotel kitchens were producing it under a variety of proper names. The croûte is not decoration: it keeps the tenderloin off the plate and catches the sauce, a piece of practical service thinking from an era when a dish had to survive the walk from kitchen to dining room.