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Filet Mignons, Bennett
Remove skin and neatly trim a two-pound piece nice, tender filet of beef. Cut it in six equal pieces, season with a teaspoon salt, half teaspoon pepper, and keep on a plate until required. Peel, carefully wash and drain well twelve good-sized fresh mushrooms, place in a sautoire with a tablespoon melted butter, and gently cook for five minutes on each side. Sprinkle over a half teaspoon salt, squeeze in juice of a quarter of lemon, add two tablespoons sherry, shuffle well and keep them hot on range.
Prepare six round pieces toast, two inches in diameter and quarter of an inch thick, spread a teaspoon of pate de foie gras over each, then place on a hot dish.
Thoroughly heat a tablespoon melted butter in frying pan, place mignons in pan one beside another, and briskly cook for three minutes on each side. Dress them on top of toast, arrange two mushrooms over each mignon, pour Bennett sauce over all and serve very hot.
A Delmonico's-style plated steak that comes together fast, provided everything is staged first: the toast rounds spread and warm, the mushrooms held hot, the sauce made in advance. Note that the recipe depends on a separate entry, Bennett sauce, which is not included here.
- The sauce comes firstNothing in these instructions makes the sauce; it is a cross-reference to another entry in the same book. Have the finished sauce ready and hot before the beef goes in the pan; the recipe gives no clue to its composition, so you will need the separate Bennett sauce entry.
- SautoireA shallow pan, generally straight-sided rather than sloped like a sauteuse. Any wide skillet works for the mushrooms; the point is that they lie flat in one layer so they colour rather than steam.
- "Shuffle well"Period shorthand for tossing the pan by its handle to roll the contents over. Do it off the heat so the sherry does not reduce to nothing.
- Peeling mushroomsStandard practice when cultivated mushrooms came from beds of manure and needed serious cleaning. Modern button or cremini mushrooms need only a wipe; peeling costs you flavour and the caps' shape.
- Timing on the beefTwo pounds cut into six gives portions of roughly five ounces before trimming loss. Three minutes a side in hot butter will leave a piece of this size on the rare side of medium-rare; thickness and pan heat vary, so judge rather than count, and let the steaks rest a couple of minutes while you finish the plate.
- Foie gras"Pate de foie gras" here means a tinned or potted goose-liver paste, spread thin. Any good liver pate or mousse gives the same effect - a rich, salty layer between the toast and the meat that keeps the bread from turning to pulp.
- The toastCut two-inch rounds with a cutter so each mignon sits centred with a small rim showing. Toasting them dry is fine, but frying the rounds in butter holds up better under sauce.
- YieldSix servings, one mignon each, as a course in a longer meal. As a main course with vegetables, count on two per person and scale accordingly.
Alexander Filippini spent many years in the kitchens of Delmonico's in New York, and the restaurant's habit of naming dishes for regular patrons runs all through his books. Garnishes titled "Bennett" are often linked to James Gordon Bennett Jr., the New York Herald publisher and a conspicuous Delmonico's customer, though the attribution is traditional rather than documented in the recipe itself. The construction is characteristic turn-of-the-century restaurant grammar: a small trimmed cut of tenderloin, a crouton beneath it to catch the juices, foie gras for richness, mushroom caps for the garnish, and a brown sauce poured over at the last second.