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Mignons of Beef, Bordelaise
Have a two-pound piece of fine tenderloin of beef (filet). Pare nicely all around, then cut into six equal filets. Flatten them lightly. Lay them on a dish, season with a teaspoon salt and half a light teaspoon white pepper, evenly divided. Heat a tablespoon of clarified butter in a large frying pan, lay in the filets one beside another and cook briskly for three minutes on each side. Dress on a hot dish, one overlapping another. Pour the Bordelaise sauce over them and serve.
A plain sear on tenderloin medallions, written for a cook who already has Bordelaise sauce standing by. The recipe as printed is only half the dish — the sauce carries it.
- The sauce is the dishBordelaise is not given here; it belongs to the sauce chapter. Make it first and hold it warm: shallots sweated in red wine reduced almost dry, let down with demi-glace or a well-reduced beef stock, finished off the heat with butter and, in the classical version, poached beef marrow. Cooking the steaks takes six minutes, so nothing should be started until the sauce is finished.
- Cut and sizeTwo pounds of tenderloin, pared and then divided into six, gives medallions of roughly 4½ to 5 oz, perhaps 1 to 1¼ inches thick once flattened. "Flatten them lightly" means a single press with the flat of a heavy knife to even the thickness, not pounding them thin.
- Timing and donenessThree minutes a side in a properly hot pan brings a 1-inch filet to about medium-rare, 130–135F at the center. Anything thicker needs a thermometer rather than a clock. Tenderloin has no fat to forgive overcooking and turns dry and mealy past medium.
- Clarified butterSpecified because whole butter's milk solids burn at searing heat. Use clarified butter or ghee, or half butter and half a neutral oil. One tablespoon is scant for six steaks — two is more realistic, and the pan must be genuinely hot before the meat goes in.
- Don't crowd"One beside another" assumes a restaurant pan. Six 5-oz medallions in a 10-inch skillet will steam rather than brown. Use a 12-inch pan or work in two batches, wiping out any burnt butter between them.
- Rest before dressingLet the filets sit two or three minutes before overlapping them on the hot dish. The original's shingled arrangement is period plating and works well enough.
- YieldSix, one filet each, as a main course.
This comes from Alexander Filippini's The International Cook Book (1906); Filippini spent decades at Delmonico's in New York, and the terse, ingredient-first phrasing here is the shorthand of a professional kitchen where the sauces were already made and waiting. Sauce bordelaise takes its name from Bordeaux and its red wine, and is classically distinguished by the poached beef marrow cut into rounds and laid over the meat; versions without marrow are common. "Mignon" simply means small or dainty. That the recipe assumes a two-pound piece of tenderloin, pared at home, suggests meat was bought in larger pieces rather than as pre-cut steaks.