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Filet Mignons, Thanksgiving
Neatly trim a little of the fat from a two-pound piece filet of beef and cut into six even filets. Mix on a plate two tablespoons sherry, a half teaspoon salt and three saltspoons pepper, repeatedly roll filets in and let infuse for half an hour, turning them once in a while. Slit thirty-six sound, even-sized American chestnuts, place on a tin and set to roast in oven for eighteen or twenty minutes. Remove, shell and neatly peel, place in a saucepan with sherry from the plate of filets and one and a half gills demi-glace, then let boil for five minutes. Pick off grapes from a half-pound bunch white, sweet, ripe California grapes, place in frying pan with a tablespoon melted butter and briskly fry for ten minutes or until a nice golden colour. Lift up with skimmer, add to chestnuts, lightly mix, then cook for five minutes and keep hot. Thoroughly heat a tablespoon melted butter in frying pan, add filets and briskly cook for three minutes on each side. Lift up, dress on a hot dish over six freshly prepared round toasts of same size as the filets, pour sauce over and serve.
A Thanksgiving course built for a household that had a stockpot going and a chestnut supply that no longer exists. Two substitutions and two shortened timings bring it into a modern kitchen.
- UnitsA gill is half a cup, so one and a half gills of demi-glace is 3/4 cup. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon; three of them is 3/4 teaspoon of pepper, which is assertive but deliberate against the sweet garnish.
- PortioningTwo pounds of trimmed tenderloin cut into six gives roughly 5 oz steaks about an inch and a quarter thick. Cut from the centre of the fillet so the six are genuinely even, or the shared three-minute timing will not hold.
- The chestnutsAmerican chestnuts effectively vanished from commerce after the blight of the early twentieth century. Use European or Italian chestnuts, the same count and size. Slit each one through the shell before roasting or they burst; the recipe names no oven temperature, but 18-20 minutes at around 400F suits, and they peel most easily while still hot.
- Demi-glaceA proper demi-glace is reduced brown veal stock with sauce espagnole. A good jarred demi-glace or a well-reduced beef stock thickened lightly will carry the dish; the sherry from the marinating plate goes in with it, so account for the salt already there.
- The grapesTen minutes of brisk frying will turn modern thin-skinned seedless grapes to mush. Four or five minutes in hot butter is enough to colour and blister them; take them out while they still hold shape, then warm them through with the chestnuts rather than cooking them another five.
- Cooking the filletsThree minutes a side in butter alone gives medium-rare on an inch-thick steak only if the pan is genuinely hot. Butter at that heat browns fast, so a little oil with it is sensible. Rest the steaks while you plate the toasts.
- The toastsCut rounds of firm white bread to the diameter of the steaks and toast or fry them in butter just before serving. They exist to absorb sauce and juices, so they must be crisp when the meat goes on.
- YieldSix servings as written, as a main course. The chestnut and grape garnish is generous at six chestnuts per person and can be halved without loss.
The International Cook Book (1906) was the work of Alexander Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, and it includes a number of dishes designated for particular days -- hence a fillet named for Thanksgiving. The chestnut-and-grape garnish is the tell: chestnuts were a genuinely American autumn staple in 1906, gathered and sold by the bushel, and the blight then spreading through the eastern forests had only just been identified in New York. Californian table grapes reached eastern kitchens by refrigerated rail, and Filippini names their origin the way a modern menu names a farm.