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Filets Mignon, Genoise Sauce
Trim a little of the fat from a two-pound piece of tender filet of beef, then cut it in six equal filets; lightly flatten, season with teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper and keep on a plate. Cut two and a half ounces fresh beef marrow in quarter-inch pieces, place on lightly buttered tin, sprinkle half teaspoon salt over, set in oven for five minutes, then remove and keep hot. Prepare a puree of peas, dress pyramid-like in centre of hot dish, heat tablespoon melted butter in frying pan, place filets in one beside another, briskly cook for three minutes on each side, arrange the marrow over the filets, pour a Genoise sauce over them and serve.
A straightforward tenderloin dish whose success rests entirely on thickness and heat: everything else is assembly. The book assumes you have its Genoise sauce and pea puree recipes to hand.
- The cut and the countTwo pounds of trimmed tenderloin divided six ways gives medallions of roughly 5 oz each, an inch or so thick once lightly flattened. Ask for a centre-cut piece; the tapered tail end will not give you six even filets.
- Three minutes a sideThat timing suits medallions around an inch thick in a properly hot pan and lands near medium-rare. Go by an instant-read thermometer instead: 125-130F pulled, rising to about 130-135F while the marrow and sauce go on.
- A tablespoon of butter is not enoughButter alone at searing heat will blacken before the meat colours. Use a neutral oil to sear and add butter in the last minute, or clarify the butter first.
- Beef marrowSold as marrow bones at most butchers; have them split lengthwise and push the marrow out, or soak the bones in cold salted water for a few hours to loosen it. Two and a half ounces is a small quantity, and how many bones it takes depends entirely on their size.
- Oven for the marrowNo temperature is given. A moderate oven, around 350F, will do for the five minutes specified; marrow renders to liquid fat quickly and any longer will leave you with grease and a few grey shreds.
- Genoise sauceNot the cake. In this period sauce genoise (and the closely related genevoise) means a dark red-wine sauce built on a mirepoix and stock, finished with butter and usually a little anchovy. The recipe is elsewhere in the book; make it before you touch the beef, since it takes far longer than the meat.
- Pea pureePeas cooked soft, sieved and beaten with butter until stiff enough to hold a mound. Modern frozen peas work well and need only a few minutes.
- Order of workSauce first, then the puree kept warm, then the marrow, then the beef last and straight to the plate. Serves six as a main course.
Filet mignon in the French kitchen of 1900 generally referred to small steaks cut from the tenderloin, served in a set-piece of meat, garnish and named sauce - a format common in the meat chapters of hotel cookbooks of the era. The sauce is the identifying element here: sauce genoise, and its near-twin genevoise, is a red-wine reduction with a mirepoix base, generally traced to the classical repertoire codified by Careme and later Escoffier, where it attaches most often to salmon and trout. Serving it over beef with marrow is a chef's liberty, and a sensible one, since marrow, red wine and beef belong together. Bone marrow appears to have been a more commonplace enrichment in this period than the restaurant delicacy it has become. The International Cook Book, compiled by Alexander Filippini, who cooked at Delmonico's in New York, is the sort of volume that carried this hotel-dining-room style into American home kitchens.