Home › The World's Kitchen › Filet Mignons with New Potatoes Rissolees
Filet Mignons with New Potatoes Rissolees
Neatly trim top of a two-pound piece filet of beef, then cut in six even pieces. Mix on a plate one tablespoon oil, one teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper; repeatedly turn filets in seasoning, arrange on a broiler and broil three minutes on each side. Remove, dress on a hot dish, arrange twelve small potatoes rissolees around the filets, spread a maitre d'hotel butter over them and serve.
A Delmonico-style plated steak that assumes two things the text never says: that you already know how to cook potatoes rissolées, and that you have maître d'hôtel butter on hand. Sort those out first and the beef takes six minutes.
- The cutA two-pound centre-cut piece of beef tenderloin divided into six gives portions of roughly 5 oz, about 1 to 1 1/4 inches thick. Ask for the trimmed centre (chateaubriand end) rather than the tapering tail, or the six pieces will not cook evenly.
- Broil means high and closeThree minutes a side only works under fierce heat. Preheat the broiler on its highest setting with the rack 3-4 inches from the element, or use a heavy pan or grill at high heat. That timing yields rare to medium-rare, around 125-130F internal; add a minute per side for medium.
- Rest the meatFilippini sends the filets straight to the hot dish. Five minutes of rest before plating keeps the juices in the beef rather than in the maitre d'hotel butter.
- Potatoes rissoleesSmall potatoes, peeled and turned to an even shape, parboiled until barely tender, drained dry, then browned all over in butter or clarified butter until crusted and golden. Twelve small new potatoes for six people is a garnish, not a side dish; three or four each is more realistic as a meal.
- Maitre d'hotel butterSoftened butter worked with chopped parsley, lemon juice, salt and pepper -- roughly 4 oz butter to 2 tablespoons parsley and the juice of half a lemon. Chill it, cut coins, and lay one on each filet so it melts at the table.
- Seasoning the plate, not the meatTurning the filets in oil, salt and pepper on a plate is a period habit that works well: the oil carries the seasoning evenly and helps the surface brown. A teaspoon of salt for two pounds of beef is on the modest side by current taste.
- YieldSix pieces, six servings, probably intended as one course within a longer menu of the period. As a main course you will want a green vegetable or salad alongside.
This is restaurant French written for the American household, which is exactly the register of Alexander Filippini's The International Cook Book (1906). Filippini spent decades at Delmonico's in New York, and the page shows it: the dish is described as a plating -- filets in the centre, potatoes ringed around, compound butter over the top -- rather than as a set of techniques, because the techniques were assumed. Filet mignon means simply "dainty fillet," in French the small end pieces of the beef tenderloin; American usage broadened it to mean a thick steak cut from the tenderloin. Rissolees comes from the French rissoler, to brown, and maitre d'hotel butter takes its name from the dining-room steward, though the story that he finished such dishes in front of the guest is tradition rather than documented fact. Both were standard entries in the professional repertoire codified in France in the nineteenth century and carried to New York's grand hotels.