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Filet of Beef, Lyonnaise
Slit on both sides twelve large, sound Italian raw chestnuts; plunge in boiling water for five minutes, remove and skin with a towel. Peel twelve very small white onions and fry in a pan with a tablespoon lard to a light brown. Place a two-and-one-half-pound piece of fine filet of beef in a small roasting pan. Season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon white pepper; pour a half tablespoon melted butter on the surface of the filet and two tablespoons cold water. Set in a brisk oven for fifteen minutes, remove it to the oven door, then add the chestnuts and onions. Moisten with one gill demi-glace, one gill tomato sauce and a half gill sherry. Reset it in the oven for twenty minutes, add two artichoke bottoms cut in quarters (if at hand), then roast for five minutes longer. Remove, dress the filet on a hot dish, pour the garnishing around the filet and serve.
A short-roasted whole filet with a chestnut-and-onion garnish, written for a cook who already has stock reductions on hand. Two things decide the outcome: the internal temperature of the beef and whether the demi-glace is real.
- Gills and other old measuresA gill is half a cup, so the moistening is 1/2 cup demi-glace, 1/2 cup tomato sauce and 1/4 cup sherry. Use a dry sherry, not cream sherry.
- Brisk ovenRead that as roughly 400-450F. The pan is specified small on purpose; a large pan lets the small amount of liquid scorch.
- Cook to temperature, not to the clockForty minutes of total oven time at this heat may well carry a 2 1/2 lb centre-cut filet past rare. Pull it at 125-130F on an instant-read thermometer for medium-rare and rest it 10 minutes; check early rather than trusting the stated times.
- "Remove it to the oven door"This means move the pan to the coolest part of the oven, or set it on the open door, so the beef stops taking direct heat while the garnish and sauce go in. Modern equivalent: take the pan out for a moment, add everything, then return it.
- Demi-glaceThe original assumes a house reduction of brown veal stock. A good jarred or frozen demi-glace works; a bouillon cube will not, as it turns the sauce salty and thin without giving it body.
- The chestnutsFive minutes in boiling water is optimistic for peeling raw chestnuts, and the inner skin is the difficulty. Score an X through the shell, boil 8-10 minutes and peel while genuinely hot, a few at a time. Vacuum-packed peeled chestnuts are a legitimate substitute and go in with the onions.
- Artichoke bottomsThe parenthetical "if at hand" marks them as optional. Canned or frozen artichoke bottoms, quartered, are the practical version; the recipe already adds them only for the last five minutes, which is enough for them to hold shape.
- Tie the filetA centre-cut filet roasts more evenly if trussed at intervals with kitchen twine, and the thin tail can be tucked under or removed for another use. The original does not mention this.
- Yield2 1/2 lb of filet plus garnish serves four generously, six at a plated dinner.
"Lyonnaise" in classical French menu language means onions, and a garniture named for Lyon almost always signals them in some form — glazed, browned or in a sauce. Here they arrive with chestnuts and artichoke bottoms, a chestnut-and-onion pairing being itself a recognised classical garnish. The book belongs to the era of the great American hotel and restaurant kitchens, where a filet was fired to order and finished with whatever reduction was already simmering, and the assumption that any cook could produce a gill of demi-glace on request tells you more about the period's staffing than about the recipe itself.