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Small Steaks, Bearnaise
Procure six small sirloin steaks of four ounces each. Mix on a plate one tablespoon oil with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon white pepper; repeatedly turn over the steaks in the seasoning. Arrange on broiler and broil for five minutes on each side. Spread a hot Bearnaise sauce on a hot dish, arrange steaks over the sauce and serve.
A four-line recipe that assumes you already have béarnaise on the stove. The only real decisions are the thickness of the steaks and how long they actually need.
- The hinge: the sauce, not the meatBéarnaise is an emulsion of egg yolk and butter over a reduction of vinegar, shallot and tarragon, and it will break if held too hot. Hold it in a warm — not simmering — water bath, and pour it onto the dish just before the steaks go over it.
- Five minutes a side is too long nowPresumably written for a broiler of the period, with the meat some distance from the flame. Four-ounce sirloins cut about ¾ inch thick want 2–3 minutes a side under a modern broiler at full heat, or in a very hot cast-iron pan, for medium-rare. Judge by feel or by 130–135F internal rather than by the clock.
- "Small sirloin steaks"Four ounces each of trimmed sirloin, cut across the grain — what a butcher would now call a petite sirloin or a sirloin medallion. Filet medallions or thick-cut top sirloin cut into portions do the same job.
- The oil-and-salt plateThis is a seasoning slurry, not a marinade: one tablespoon oil, one teaspoon salt, half a teaspoon white pepper, and the steaks turned in it repeatedly. Do it just before broiling. White pepper may have been chosen so no black flecks show against the sauce, though it is Filippini's default seasoning throughout.
- Dry the surfaceAn oiled steak straight from the plate will still brown, but blot off pooled oil before it meets the grate or it will smoke and flare rather than sear.
- Everything hot"A hot dish" is not a flourish. Béarnaise on a cold platter cools quickly below serving temperature and turns waxy. Warm the platter in a low oven while the steaks cook.
- YieldSix steaks, six servings as written; the recipe gives no quantity for the sauce. Rest the meat only a couple of minutes — small cuts lose their heat fast, and the sauce cannot be reheated to compensate.
Béarnaise takes its name from Béarn, the southwestern province that was the birthplace of Henri IV, and the sauce is generally traced to the Pavillon Henri IV at Saint-Germain-en-Laye in the 1830s or 1840s — a traditional attribution rather than a documented one, since the name appears in print only somewhat later. By the time this book was compiled it had become standard restaurant equipment in New York as much as in Paris, which is why the recipe here spends no words explaining it: Alexander Filippini had spent decades at Delmonico's, where a cook was assumed to know the mother sauces and their derivatives cold.