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Tenderloin Cutlets, Leishman
Remove fat and skin from a two-pound piece tenderloin of beef, then finely chop with two ounces raw beef marrow, place in a bowl, add one finely chopped truffle, twelve chopped, canned mushrooms, one egg yolk and a gill cream. Season with light teaspoon salt, half teaspoon pepper and saltspoon grated nutmeg. Stir briskly with wooden spoon five minutes. Then divide into twelve equal parts and roll out to nice cutlet forms. Finely chop three shallots, two branches parsley and two branches chervil, then lightly roll cutlets in these herbs, dip in beaten egg and roll in rye-bread crumbs. Heat two tablespoons butter in a frying pan, place cutlets in pan, one beside another, and fry four minutes on each side. Remove, dress on a hot dish, one overlapping another, crown-like, adjust a paper frill at end of each, pour a Colbert sauce around the cutlets and serve.
Despite the name, these are not cutlets cut from the tenderloin but a fine forcemeat of chopped tenderloin shaped into cutlet forms — closer to a luxury patty than a steak. The mixture is the whole dish, so treat the mincing and the five minutes of stirring as the real work.
- The hinge: chop, don't grindThe texture depends on hand-chopping the beef and marrow finely, as the recipe directs, rather than pushing it through a grinder, which packs the meat and gives a springy, sausage-like result. Chill the meat and marrow until firm and work with a heavy knife or two.
- Archaic measuresA gill is half a cup (4 fl oz). A saltspoon is about a quarter teaspoon. "Two branches" of parsley or chervil means two sprigs. The half teaspoon of pepper is assertive by modern standards; a quarter is closer to current taste.
- Beef marrowTwo ounces of raw marrow is what a couple of 2-inch marrow bones will give; ask a butcher to split them and scoop the marrow with a small spoon after a soak in cold water. It is the fat in an otherwise very lean mixture — omitting it gives dry cutlets, and finely chopped beef suet or cold butter is the nearest substitute.
- Truffle and canned mushroomsOne fresh truffle is a large outlay for twelve cutlets; a teaspoon of chopped preserved truffle or a little truffle paste stirred through carries the same intent. "Twelve chopped, canned mushrooms" means twelve small whole button mushrooms from a tin — roughly a cup, chopped fine and squeezed dry so the mix does not slacken.
- Rye-bread crumbsDry rye crumbs are darker and sweeter than white and colour fast in butter. Use stale rye dried in a low oven and ground fine, not the coarse fresh crumb, or the coating will burn before the interior sets.
- Shaping and the herb rollChill the shaped cutlets for half an hour before breading; the raw yolk and cream mixture is soft and will spread in the pan otherwise. The chopped shallot, parsley and chervil go directly onto the surface before the egg wash, so press them on rather than dusting.
- Cooking timeFour minutes a side in butter over medium heat suits cutlets about half an inch thick. Because this is chopped meat, take it to an internal 160F rather than serving it pink; if the crumbs are browning too fast, finish the pan in a 350F oven.
- Colbert sauceA meat glaze thinned with a little stock, finished off the heat with butter, lemon juice and chopped tarragon. It must not boil once the butter goes in or it separates.
- Yield and frillsTwelve cutlets serve six as a main course. The paper frills are a decorative flourish belonging to formal service and can be skipped without loss; the crown arrangement on a hot platter still works.
Dishes titled *côtelettes* that contain no bone or chop at all were a fixture of late nineteenth-century restaurant cooking, where a fine forcemeat was moulded to the outline of a cutlet, breaded, fried, and finished with a paper frill at the imaginary bone — a piece of deliberate kitchen theatre. Filippini's *International Cook Book* (1906) is full of such preparations, and of recipes carrying a surname after the dish name: the author had spent years at Delmonico's in New York, and attaching a patron's or colleague's name to a garnish or a forcemeat was standard practice in that world, though the individuals behind names like Leishman are usually unrecoverable. The Colbert sauce, a meat glaze mounted with butter, lemon and tarragon, is generally traced to the mid-nineteenth-century French repertoire and named for Louis XIV's finance minister, part of the long fashion for commemorating statesmen in sauces. The raw beef marrow is the clearest marker of the period: it was a cheap, ordinary butcher's item then and enriched everything from forcemeats to steak garnishes, where a modern cook would reach for butter or cream.