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August 28
Menu: Iced Bouillon; Pulled Bread; Fillet of Beef, Horseradish Sauce; Franconia Potatoes; Corn Souffle; Endive, French Dressing; Salted Triangles; Violet Mousse; Coffee Fillet of Beef-Trim fillet into good shape. Lard it plentifully, letting the whole upper surface be perforated with lardoons. Place in baking pan thin slices of larding pork, over pork place layer of chopped onion, carrots, turnip, and celery; lay tenderloin on top. Pour in 1 cup stock, add ½ teaspoon salt, 14 teaspoon pepper, 4 sprigs parsley, 1 bay leaf, and 2 cloves. Bake in hot oven 30 minutes, and baste frequently. Remove when done; strain off gravy and skim off grease. Blend 1 tablespoon Crisco with 1 tablespoon flour in a pan, add gravy strained from pan, 1/4 cup grated horseradish, salt and paprika to taste and bring to boiling point, then add 2 tablespoons lemon juice and 1 tablespoon vinegar. Spread sauce on hot serving dish and lay fillet on it.
A whole beef tenderloin roasted fast on a bed of vegetables, served on a horseradish pan sauce. Two things need translating: the larding, which almost nobody does now, and the vague "hot oven."
- Oven temperatureThe recipe says only "hot oven," with no figure. By the usual convention of the period that means somewhere around 425-450F, which suits a whole fillet: a short, fierce roast rather than a long one.
- Doneness beats the clockThirty minutes is a reasonable estimate for a trimmed 3-4 lb fillet, but the tapering shape makes timing unreliable. Pull it at 125-130F at the thickest point for medium rare and rest it 10 minutes; the original gives no internal cue at all.
- LardoonsLarding means threading strips of pork fat through the meat with a larding needle to keep a very lean cut moist. Modern equivalents are barding (wrapping the fillet in thin sheets of pork fat or bacon and tying it) or simply oiling and roasting hot; if you skip added fat entirely, err on the rare side.
- "Thin slices of larding pork"This is fresh, unsmoked pork fatback or fat salt pork, not bacon. The recipe gives no reason for laying it under the meat, but in practice it shields the vegetable bed from scorching in a hot oven and enriches the drippings.
- The vegetable bedOnion, carrot, turnip and celery here are a mirepoix, aromatics for the gravy rather than a side dish. Cut them coarsely and discard them when you strain.
- On the pepperThe printed page gives a quarter teaspoon of pepper, which is what our text now reads. That, with the half teaspoon of salt, is the right seasoning for a cup of stock.
- Crisco and the rouxCrisco was new when this book was printed and is still sold; any neutral solid or liquid fat, or butter, blends with the flour the same way. One tablespoon of each thickens about a cup of liquid to a light sauce.
- Horseradish"Grated horseradish" means the fresh root. Bottled prepared horseradish already contains vinegar, so if you substitute it, hold back some or all of the tablespoon of vinegar and taste before adding the lemon juice.
- Acid last, for a reasonThe lemon juice and vinegar go in after the sauce boils. Long boiling drives off their sharpness, and acid slackens a flour-thickened sauce, so it is added at the end.
- YieldA trimmed fillet of this size serves six to eight. Carve across the grain in thick slices and lay them back over the sauce, which is spread on the platter rather than poured over.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was written for Procter & Gamble by Marion Harris Neil, then cookery editor of Ladies' Home Journal, to teach American cooks what to do with a wholly new product: a solid, shelf-stable vegetable shortening made from hydrogenated cottonseed oil, introduced in 1911 as a substitute for lard and butter. The "Calendar of Dinners" section supplies a menu for every day of the year, and this fillet is the centerpiece for August 29. The dish itself is French restaurant cooking domesticated for the American table: a larded filet de boeuf roasted on a mirepoix, finished with a horseradish sauce closer to German and English taste than to Paris. Larding appears routinely in cookbooks of this period, and its near-disappearance from home kitchens is one of the clearest markers of how much this recipe's world has receded.