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Mignons of Beef, Strasser
Neatly trim a two-pound piece tenderloin of beef, then cut it in six equal pieces. Season all around with a teaspoon salt, half teaspoon pepper, and keep on a plate until required. Cut six sound red tomatoes into quarters, place on a plate, remove seeds, then season with a level teaspoon salt, half teaspoon sugar, three saltspoons pepper and half teaspoon chopped parsley. Gently turn pieces in seasoning and roll in frying batter, then drop in boiling fat and fry for ten minutes, turning with skimmer once in a while, lift up, neatly trim and keep hot. Cut off tails and peel six large fresh mushrooms, place in a sautoire with a tablespoon melted butter and fry for three minutes on each side. Sprinkle over three saltspoons salt, pour in two tablespoons sherry, let cook for two minutes and keep on corner of range. Thoroughly heat a tablespoon melted butter in frying pan, arrange in filets one beside another and briskly cook for three minutes on each side. Remove and dress on a hot dish over six freshly prepared toasts the size of filets, crown-like, place tomatoes in centre and arrange mushrooms on top of filets. Place six very thin slices freshly broiled bacon around filets, add a half ounce butter to pan in which mignons were cooked, toss on fire until of a nice brown colour, evenly pour over filets and serve.
A Delmonico's-style plated dish: six tournedos on toast, battered tomato quarters in the centre, sherried mushrooms on top, bacon around, pan butter poured over. The steps are staggered, so read the whole thing before lighting a burner.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. "Three saltspoons pepper" is therefore three-quarters of a teaspoon, which is generous; scale to taste.
- Sautoire and "corner of range"A sautoire is a straight-sided shallow saute pan. "Keep on the corner of the range" means the coolest part of a coal stove top: hold the mushrooms in their liquor over the lowest possible heat, or off the heat covered.
- The frying batter is not givenUse a standard frying batter, flour beaten with egg and milk to the consistency of thick cream. Make it slack enough to coat but not to mask the tomato.
- Ten minutes is too long for the tomatoesThe recipe says only 'boiling fat', conventionally around 360-375F, and battered tomato quarters are done when the coating is set and golden, roughly two to three minutes. Much longer and the flesh is likely to collapse and the batter to slide off. Drain seeded quarters well before battering or the batter will not adhere.
- Cut the tenderloin thickA two-pound piece, trimmed and cut in six, gives medallions of about five ounces or a little under, roughly an inch to an inch and a quarter thick, not thin. Three minutes a side in butter brings that to rare-to-medium-rare; go a minute longer per side for medium and rest them while you build the plate.
- Butter alone will burnThe searing butter and the finishing brown butter are both on the edge of scorching at steak heat. Clarified butter for the sear, then fresh butter swirled in the pan off direct flame for the sauce, gives the "nice brown colour" without bitterness.
- Mushrooms"Cut off tails" means trim the stems; peeling caps is optional with today's cultivated mushrooms. Use six large flat caps, gill side up when you add the sherry so the liquor collects.
- Order of workToast, bacon and mushrooms first and hold them warm; fry the tomatoes next; cook the beef last and sauce it immediately. The dish is served hot on a hot platter and does not wait.
- YieldSix servings as a main course.
This comes from Alexander Filippini's The International Cook Book (1906), written after decades at Delmonico's in New York, and it is a good specimen of the era's plating grammar: a round of toast, a medallion of tenderloin, a garnish crowning each piece, and a named suffix that tells a waiter which dish is which. Filets mignons in this period were often served on a crouton or toast round, partly for height and partly to catch the butter, and the naming convention -- Rossini, Bordelaise, Strasser -- came out of the French grande cuisine that ran American hotel kitchens. "Strasser" is not one of the canonical Escoffier garnishes and is likely a house name, either for a patron or a chef, in the same way Delmonico's menus carried dishes named for the people who ordered them; that attribution is traditional rather than documented. At the centre sits a battered fried tomato, at a time when tomatoes had become an everyday market vegetable.