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Mignons of Beef, Immacule
Neatly trim a two-pound piece filet of beef, cut it in six even filets and season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper. Thoroughly heat a tablespoon melted butter in frying pan, add the mignons, briskly cook for three minutes on each side, lift up and keep hot. Prepare six round toasts, two inches in diameter and half inch thick, butter on both sides, place on a tin and set in oven until a nice golden colour. Remove, spread a teaspoon pate de foie gras over each, dress on a hot dish, place mignons and spread evenly a Bearnaise sauce over them, place two thin strips truffles cross-like over all and serve.
A Delmonico-style plated dish that depends almost entirely on timing: the beef, the croûtes and the sauce all have to be ready at once, and the Béarnaise is assumed rather than given.
- The hinge: cook to temperature, not to the clockThree minutes a side suits a filet cut about an inch and a quarter thick in a properly hot pan; thicker medallions will still be raw. Pull them at 125-130F for rare to medium-rare, since they finish over a hot toast under warm sauce.
- Cutting the filetsTwo pounds of trimmed tenderloin divided six ways gives roughly 5 oz medallions. Cut from the centre of the fillet so they are even, and tie each with string or press flat so they sit level on the croûte.
- A tablespoon of butter is not enoughButter alone at searing heat will blacken. Use butter with a spoon of neutral oil, or clarified butter, and get the pan properly hot before the meat goes in; crowding six medallions in one pan will steam them, so work in two batches.
- Béarnaise is not in the recipeFilippini expected it from the sauce chapter. Make it separately from a reduction of white wine vinegar, shallot and tarragon stems, then egg yolks and butter, and hold it at no more than about 130F or it will split. It should be spoonable, not pourable.
- Pâté de foie grasThe book means a smooth foie gras purée, not a whole seared lobe. A teaspoon per croûte is right; a modern mousse de foie gras or a good chicken liver parfait stands in without changing the balance of the plate.
- The croûtesTwo-inch rounds of firm white bread, half an inch thick, buttered both sides and coloured in a hot oven; the recipe gives no temperature or time, only 'until a nice golden colour'. Toast them last so they are hot and crisp when the meat lands, or they go soft under the sauce.
- TrufflesTwo crossed strips per portion is a garnish, not a flavouring. Preserved black truffle sliced thin is the period product; a few drops of truffle-scented oil on the croûte is not the same thing and will overpower the Béarnaise.
- YieldSix mignons, one per person as a main course with a vegetable alongside.
The International Cook Book was compiled by Alexander Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, and this dish belongs squarely to the late-nineteenth-century restaurant repertoire that grew up around the tenderloin: a small round of beef set on a fried or toasted croûte, finished with foie gras, truffle and a rich sauce. Tournedos Rossini is the best-known member of the family, and dozens of near-identical variants circulated under proper names, place names, or, as here, a fanciful epithet — immaculé, meaning spotless or unblemished, presumably for the pale Béarnaise blanketing the meat. Such names were largely a kitchen convenience, letting a chef distinguish one garnish from another on a menu card, and they seldom carry any documented story behind them. The construction tells you a good deal about the period's economics: beef fillet, foie gras and truffle in a single portion made this a dish for hotel dining rooms and private houses with a trained cook, not for the ordinary household kitchen the same book elsewhere serves.