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Filet Mignons, Montebello
Neatly pare a two-pound piece tenderloin of beef, cut it in six equal pieces and lightly flatten. Mix on a plate a tablespoon oil, teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper. Repeatedly turn filets in seasoning, place on a broiler and broil for three minutes on each side, remove and keep hot. Prepare six round toasts two inches in diameter and one-third inch thick, dress on a hot dish, arrange filets on top, pour a Montebello sauce over filets and serve.
A plain steakhouse formula from Filippini's kitchen: trimmed tenderloin, fast heat, a crouton to catch the juices, and a sauce made elsewhere in the book. Almost everything that can go wrong here is a matter of thickness and heat.
- The sauce is a cross-referenceMontebello sauce is not given here; the recipe assumes it is available elsewhere in the book. What went under that name is not recoverable from this page. Have it made and hot before the beef goes under the heat.
- What "broiler" meantIn this period a hinged wire gridiron set over live coals or the open flame of a range, not the overhead element in a modern oven. Under a home broiler, preheat it and the pan hard and set the rack close, or use a heavy cast-iron pan over high heat; three minutes a side assumes fierce, direct heat.
- Thickness and timingTwo pounds of pared tenderloin in six pieces gives medallions of roughly 5 oz, and "lightly flatten" brings them to about an inch. Three minutes a side at high heat lands them rare to medium-rare, which is the intent. Judge by an instant-read thermometer: 125-130F for rare to medium-rare, then rest five minutes.
- Pare means trimStrip the silverskin and any chain meat before cutting. Silverskin does not render and will curl the medallion off the pan. The recipe has you pare a two-pound piece, so the two pounds is the weight before trimming.
- The oil-and-seasoning plateA tablespoon of oil with the salt and pepper turned over the meat is a marinade and a dry-surface aid in one. A teaspoon of salt across two pounds is about right; season the meat, not the plate, if you want it even.
- The toastsTwo-inch rounds a third of an inch thick, as specified. Get them crisp all the way through, otherwise the sauce turns them to paste before the plate reaches the table.
- YieldSix medallions, so six modest portions or four generous ones. Everything must be hot at once: dish, toasts, sauce, beef.
Filippini spent his career at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry has the shape of a restaurant service note rather than a home recipe: the component sauce lives elsewhere in the book, the garnish is standardised, and the cook is assumed to know what a gridiron will do in three minutes. Dishes named Montebello belong to the nineteenth-century French practice of naming garnishes after battles and places, though which Montebello is meant is uncertain. The crouton under the filet is older than the name and entirely practical, keeping the meat clear of its own juices and giving the sauce something to sit on; the same logic produces tournedos Rossini and much of the rest of the tenderloin repertoire that filled American hotel menus around 1900.