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February 7
Menu: Crab Canapes; St. Germain Soup; Braised Fillet of Beef; French Bean Salad; Bar-Le-Duc Cream; Fruits; Biscuits; Cheese; Nuts; Coffee Braised Fillet of Beef-Tie up fillet of beef neatly with string and put in stewpan, bottom of which has been well Criscoed and lined with thin slices fat bacon and 2 sliced onions. Cook for 20 minutes, then barely cover with stock, add 1 wineglass of sherry, and bring to a boil; then add 1 small onion stuck with cloves, 1 small turnip, 1 carrot, 1 bouquet of herbs, 1 tablespoon Crisco, salt and pepper to taste. Let meat simmer gently in this for 1½ to 2 hours. For garnish, take equal quantities of French peas and string beans, artichoke bottoms, new carrots and turnips. Cut latter in uniform shapes with fancy vegetable cutter, and cook them separate in consomme. Strain off about 3/4 pint of stock from fillet of beef, and pour on brown roux, made with 2 tablespoons each of flour and Crisco; stir until it boils, add small piece of glaze and reduce a little over quick fire. Add dash of kitchen bouquet, salt, and pepper. Dish up fillet of beef, glaze it with some of sauce, and arrange vegetables around it in little heaps, each kind separate. Serve remainder of sauce in a boat.
A full-dress French braise dressed up as an American product demonstration. Two things need attention before anything else: the cut, and the fact that every fat in the dish is Crisco.
- The cut is the problemThe cut is the sticking point -- "Fillet of beef" is the whole tenderloin, which has almost no collagen and no fat. Braising a larded fillet was standard classical practice, but 1½ to 2 hours of simmering leaves it grey and dry by modern tastes. If you want the vegetables and sauce as written, braise a 3-4 lb chuck roast for 2½-3 hours instead, or sear and roast a tenderloin to 125-130F and serve it with the same garnish and sauce.
- Crisco and "Criscoed"Crisco is hydrogenated vegetable shortening; "well Criscoed" simply means well greased. Any neutral oil, or butter for the roux, does the same job. The tablespoon of Crisco added to the braising liquid is there to sell shortening, not to improve the dish, and can be left out.
- A wineglass of sherryIn 1913 usage a wineglass is about 2 fluid ounces, so 1/4 cup. Use a dry amontillado or fino rather than cream sherry.
- Glaze and kitchen bouquet"A small piece of glaze" is meat glace — stock reduced to a syrup that sets firm. A teaspoon of commercial demi-glace concentrate stands in. Kitchen Bouquet is still sold; it is caramel and vegetable colouring for browning the sauce, and a splash is all that is meant.
- The sauceCook the flour and fat to a genuine hazelnut brown before adding the 3/4 pint (1½ cups) of strained braising liquid, then reduce hard. Rushing the roux is what leaves the sauce tasting pasty.
- Artichoke bottoms and French peasArtichoke bottoms come tinned or frozen; petits pois are the small sweet peas sold frozen. Cooking the garnish vegetables separately in consommé rather than together is the whole point of the presentation — the heaps stay distinct in colour and flavour.
- YieldA trimmed tenderloin of 3-4 lb with this quantity of garnish serves 6 to 8.
- The "Coffee" in the titleThis page comes from a dated menu calendar; "Coffee" is the last line of the February 8 dinner, not part of the beef. Nothing in the recipe calls for it.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was published by Procter & Gamble to introduce hydrogenated cottonseed oil to cooks who had always reached for butter or lard, and its "Calendar of Dinners" gave a full menu for every day of the year with Crisco worked into as many dishes as the writer could manage — here into the pan, the braising liquid and the roux alike. The dish itself is plain classical French cooking: a braised fillet finished with a brown sauce and surrounded by separately cooked vegetables cut to shape, the arrangement generally called \which Escoffier-era service treated as one common dress for a braised joint among several. That a pamphlet selling shortening reached for this kind of menu says a good deal about the period's ambitions; the shortening's other selling point, that it was neither animal fat nor butter, made it useful in kosher and Lenten kitchens as well.