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Filet of Beef, Bruxelleoise
Skin and neatly trim a two-and-a-half-pound piece tenderloin of beef. Place a mirepoix in a small roasting pan, lay the filet over, season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper; spread a half teaspoon melted butter on the surface of the beef, pour two tablespoons water into the pan, then set in the oven to roast for thirty-five minutes, turning and basting it once in a while. Remove, dress the filet on a dish and keep hot. Skim the fat from the gravy, place the contents of the pan in a small saucepan, with two tablespoons sherry and one and a half light gills demi-glace, boil on the range for ten minutes, then strain through a Chinese strainer over the filet. Have the same amount of Brussels sprouts, arrange them at the opposite ends of the dish and serve.
A classical roast tenderloin whose only real complications are the vocabulary and the missing oven temperature. Everything hinges on internal temperature rather than the stated thirty-five minutes.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given because the book assumes a coal range. Roast at 425F; a trimmed 2 1/2 lb centre-cut tenderloin will reach 125-130F internal in roughly 25-35 minutes. Pull it on the thermometer, not the clock, and rest it 10 minutes before slicing.
- MirepoixHere it means the aromatic bed, not a finished dish: diced carrot, onion and celery, often with a scrap of bacon or a bay leaf. Cut it coarsely so it flavours the drippings without scorching in a hot oven.
- GillsA gill is half a cup, so one and a half "light gills" of demi-glace is a scant 3/4 cup. "Light" appears to indicate a shade under the full measure; either way the amount is not precise and does not need to be.
- Demi-glaceClassically espagnole combined with brown stock and reduced by half. Good jarred demi-glace or a well-reduced beef stock works; if using a commercial concentrate, go easy on the seasoning overall, since the pan juices and the concentrate are both salty.
- Chinese strainerA chinois, the fine conical sieve. Any fine-mesh strainer does the job, pressing the vegetables lightly to extract the juices without pushing pulp through.
- The butterHalf a teaspoon of melted butter over a 2 1/2 lb filet is barely a film. A tablespoon brushed on, or a thin barding of fat, gives better colour on a lean cut that has almost no marbling of its own.
- Brussels sprouts"The same amount" is ambiguous in the original; a pound or so is a workable reading, enough for two mounds at the ends of the platter. Boil or steam them until just tender and toss with butter, then arrange them after the sauce has been strained over the beef so they stay green.
- YieldRoughly five to six as a main course; the original states no yield.
"Bruxelloise" is garnish shorthand from the classical French repertoire, where a dish named for a place usually means a fixed set of accompaniments rather than a regional method: in this case Brussels sprouts, sometimes with braised endive and château potatoes, on a plain roast or sauté finished with demi-glace. The sprout itself is generally traced to the market gardens around Brussels, and by the late nineteenth century it had become firm enough in the codified garnish lists that a cook seeing the word on a menu knew what would arrive on the plate. That shared vocabulary is the point of a book like this one, compiled by Alexander Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, for an American readership expected to run a table on continental lines. The instructions assume a great deal of the reader -- a mirepoix, a demi-glace and a chinois are all named without explanation, because in a professional kitchen of the period they were already at hand.