At first glance, Fanny Longfellow’s filet de boeuf recipe seems simple and straightforward. However, if taken at face value, the modern cook will end up with the wrong cut of meat, baked until it turns to leather in an oven for two hours! To adapt the recipe, we turned to the talented Julia Child, who spent years translating old French recipes for current cooking techniques.
According to the beef chapter in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, the American and French cuts of beef are completely different. So, a “filet” is actually the tenderloin, a large cut of meat. We couldn’t find individual beef tenderloin steaks at the store, so we divided ours into steaks from the American “porterhouse steak” section, each about 2 inches thick. Due to more efficient modern cooking methods, we elected to skip pounding the meat so they would not overcook. Finally, this recipe creates an abundance of gravy, which we didn’t have a problem with! The leftovers work well with biscuits for a simple breakfast.
Dining and Cooking