Showing posts with label Chateaubriand. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chateaubriand. Show all posts

Filet Mignon on French Menus and Filet de Bœuf in French Cuisine.

from
Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman

behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com

 


An 8-ounce (225 gram) US Filet Mignon
This wonderful looking steak in not a Filet Mignon in France!
Photograph courtesy of Arnold Gatilao
https://www.flickr.com/photos/arndog/3054022064/

  

A true story. 

A French businessman meets his English and American colleagues in Paris and they decide to have lunch together in a restaurant famous for its meat dishes. Without waiting for a menu, the Frenchman chooses the best steak dish he can think of and orders a Filet de Bœuf, the Englishman orders a Fillet Steak, and the American orders a Filet Mignon. The Frenchman and the Englishman are served excellent cuts from the center of a beef tenderloin, large fillet steaks. The American was served a superb cut, but from a pork tenderloin!  He had not remembered rule number one. If he had read the menu, it would have read:  Filet Mignon de Veau à la Moutarde, a veal tenderloin (fillet) prepared with a mustard sauce. The term Filet Mignon in France is used for veal and pork tenderloins, not beef. With customers who are confident servers don’t question orders; in this case the server just asked how they would like their steaks done.  The veal filet mignon was excellent, perfectly cooked, but for filet mignon's in France the American visitor learned rule number one.

 

Rule No 1 when ordering a Filet Mignon in France

Read the menu carefully

Rule No 2 is “Read it Again.”


  

A Filet Mignon in the USA is not a Filet Mignon in France.

   

Ordering a Filet Mignon in the USA indicates that you want the very best.  In the USA, a Filet Mignon is the name given to the tenderloin, a large muscle that is the tenderest of all beef cuts (in the UK, that’s the Fillet).   While other cuts make great steaks, they may be tastier, but they are not as tender. A Filet Mignon is the most expensive cut that most US restaurants offer, and it will generally be served with a sauce.

 

The meaning of Filet Mignon in French

 

In French, the term Filet Mignon means “dainty fillet,” and it does not refer to the whole beef tenderloin, rather to the narrow, delicate, almost pointed, end of the tenderloin - the part that is prized for its tenderness.

 

The thickest part of a beef tenderloin, the fillet, in France is reserved for a Chateaubriand and towards the center, a Tournedos. As the tenderloin becomes thinner, about halfway down, the French will cut their Filets de Bœuf, beef fillets. For beef, the Filet Mignon is the name given to the last few inches of the narrowest part of the tenderloin, the part that is “dainty.” 

 

A whole tenderloin can be called a Filet Mignon in France

BUT,

THEN IT US A “PORK” OR “VEAL” TENDERLOIN!

Rarely, very rarely, if ever, will there be a Filet Mignon de Bœuf on a French Menu.

 

The confusion over this cut stems from US chefs and butchers adopting French names for their own use, and that meant altering their original meanings. They omitted to inform future travelers to France of the changes.    

Barded (fat wrapped) USA Filet Mignons.

The smallest steak in this picture will still be too large for the French Filet Mignon

Photograph courtesy of Bradley West

https://www.flickr.com/photos/wyldwest/3519146858/

 

This beef tenderloin, the filet, has little natural fat.  Whether called a filet mignon in the USA, a fillet steak in the UK or a filet de bœuf in France it will be barded, wrapped in fat, before being cooked. Without barding the steak would dry out. 

N.B. This cut should never be ordered well done. To order a steak cooked the way you like read the Post: Ordering a steak in France cooked the way you like it.

A whole beef tenderloin, which is boneless, can weigh anywhere from 1.3 kilos (2.5 lbs) to 2.3 kilos (4.5 lbs). In the USA most restaurants start at the thickest end of tenderloin and cut 2" to 2.5" thick steaks until they reach the narrow end.  A large sized US Fillet Mignon steak is around eight ounces (225 grams). Some restaurants offer 10-ounce (280 gram) options.  



A whole tenderloin.

The smallest part at the end of this cut, on the right-hand side in the picture above, is the French Filet Mignon, the dainty fillet.

Photograph courtesy of Marx Foods.

Nevertheless, in France, cuts taken from the thinnest part of the tenderloin will rarely be called Filet Mignon.  Instead, they will on the menu as Médaillions, or used for an excellent Steak Tartar or used for dishes such as Beef Stroganov.  

Whole tenderloins of pork and veal are much smaller, The French use the term Filet Mignon for the much smaller, but whole, tenderloins of pork and veal.  A Filet Mignon, from an average pig weigh about 500 grams (17.5 ozs), and that is about enough for three people, two if they are very hungry.  A veal tenderloin weighs about 700 grams (24.5 ozs), a fair-sized meal for three or four.

Filet de Bœuf on French Menus:

   

Filet de Bœuf Poêlé, Jus de Cresson et Pommes Grenailles – A lightly fried fillet steak (from the tenderloin) served with a watercress juice flavored sauce and small new potatoes.

Jus de Cresson: A watercress sauce made with the Jus ("juice") of the wvatercress. It will be combined with the cooking juices from the pan, resulting in a natural sauce with a watercress accent.

Cresson - The watercress on your menu will have been farmed, and won’t be as sharp as the wild variety.  As children, my brother and I used to collect wild watercress from slow-running streams near our home in the English Lake District, and it was truly spicy.

When dining in the French countryside, you might be lucky enough to have a meal prepared with wild watercress supplied by local mushroom and herb gatherers, the "ramasseurs de champignons et herbes." If so, you're in for a treat. 

Watercress has a long history in France, and already in 810 C.E., watercress was one of the herbs that Emperor Charlemagne ordered to be grown on his estates as part of his effort to make them self-sufficient.1

Cresson de Mérévilles, Label Rouge, is the most highly rated cultivated watercress in France. It's grown around the town of Méréville in the department of Essonne, an hour and a quarter from Paris, 74 km (45 miles). They have been cultivating watercress here for over one hundred years.

 

If you’re going to be in the area during Easter visit a French watercress fair.


The Foire Annuelle au Cresson de Méréville.

The annual watercress fair in Méréville.


The fair is held from Saturday through Monday over the Easter weekend, in France. Easter is legally a national holiday, but not a religious one, in France, although some 10% of the population attends church.  Since the dates of Easter change yearly, check the Méréville website or any French Tourist Information office.

 


A Filet de Bœuf with mashed potatoes.
Photograph courtesy of Bex Walton
https://www.flickr.com/photos/bexwalton/18190822953/

  

Cœur de Filet de Bœuf Grillé, Sauce au Poivre Vert A grilled center cut  from the heart, the center, of a beef tenderloin, served with a green pepper sauce,

Sauce au Poivre VertA green pepper sauce,. Most French pepper steaks are prepared with green peppercorns, and for good reason. Their milder profile is easier to control, which ensures the dish is perfectly seasoned without overpowering the other flavors. When a fierier taste is desired, poivre noir, black peppercorns, will be used and that would be clearly noted on the menu.

  

Filet Mignon de Bœuf en Brochette Marchand de Vin – The thin end of a beef fillet cut into cubes and served on a skewer with a Sauce Marchand de Vin.

Sauce Marchand de Vin:: A sauce prepared for a wine merchant.

A beef fillet served this way allows for the use of the thin end of the tenderloin, the French Beef Filet Mignon, which may be cut into small pieces. A Sauce Marchand de Vin is made with red wine and beef stock.

Brochette: A skewer. Read carefully; it’s written with two “t’s” and may easily be confused with brochet, written with one “t,” which is pike, the fish.

Sauce Marchand de Vin or Sauce Vigneronne – A wine merchant's sauce or the sauce of a vigneronne, a vintner, a winemaker. While the recipe can vary slightly, Alain Ducasse’s includes shallots, red wine, butter, lemon, flat parsley, ground pepper, and fleur de sel.

  

Filet de Bœuf, Sauce au Porto, Fricassée de Cèpes, Pleurotes et Champignons de Paris – A beef fillet served with a Port wine sauce and a stew of wild Porcini mushrooms, farmed oyster and button mushrooms

Cèpes: The Cèpe, Porcini or Penny Bun is one of the tastiest wild mushrooms. France is blessed with many pine, chestnut, and oak forests, which are the trees that nearly all wild mushrooms like, though the Cèpe's favorite is pine forests. In season fresh Cèpes will be on many menus. That is the time to enjoy the many ways that French chefs offer Cèpes.

PleurotesThe oyster mushroom is very popular, with at least five members of its family cultivated in France.  They will be on many menus. They appear on many menus, not only for their taste but also for their varied colors, and they are found in many French recipes.

The different strains of these mushrooms vary in texture from very soft to very chewy. Their association with oysters comes from the looks of a number of family members and not from any oyster taste or texture.

Champignons de Paris: The button mushroom was first cultivated in the 17th century, though it took another three hundred years for the first successful, commercially cultivated mushroom to was developed in Paris. So, in the early 20th century came the Champignon de Paris, the button mushroom. Following on the button mushroom's commercial success, the search was on. Cultivating other mushrooms came with serious investments. 

Today, we may choose from over fifteen types of cultivated mushrooms.  Cultivated mushrooms, with their ability to intensify tastes and their wide variety of textures, are now available year-round. The white button mushroom offers a diverse selection, featuring four or more varieties in different sizes, with different names, different prices, and a range of colors. Despite all these differences, the white button mushroom is the same mushroom as the brown button mushroom.  The same mushroom as the medium-sized Cremini, also called the Portabellini, Portabella, Portobello, along with five or six other names.  The only difference between all these mushrooms is their degree of maturity and color.

Porto:   Port wine is produced in the Douro Valley in the northern provinces of Portugal.  Within the European Union, only Port from Portugal can be labeled “Port” or “Porto.” However, many other countries produce Port wines, and in the USA, any country can label its product as Port. The method for making Port is no longer a secret, and many New World wine producers make Port-style wines, but I think the original creators in Portugal still make the best.

Port is a fortified wine; that is, a wine that has an eau-de-vie, a young grape brandy, added to the fermenting wine in the barrel. That addition stops the fermentation and creates a new wine with higher alcohol content.  Most Ports have around 20% alcohol.

Ports come in red, rosé and white varieties.  Sweet reds are the Port most often used in sauces, and a red Port may also be served as a dessert wine. White Port may appear on your menu in sauces for seafood and fish, and a chilled sweet white Port can be a great aperitif.

 

Médaillons de Filet de Bœuf Balsamique – Round cuts from the end of the tenderloin (medallions) served with a Balsamic vinegar sauce.

Balsamic vinegar:  A vinegar that is only produced in and around the city of Modena, Italy. Despite its Italian origin, the French happily recognize and incorporate the best products from around the world into their kitchen; their use will be noted on the menu.

Balsamic vinegar owes its unique taste not only to the Trebiano grape used in its production but also to how it is aged.

The aging process takes the vinegar through five different wooden barrels, each adding to the flavor. Unlike most grape-based vinegars, Balsamic vinegar was never a wine, but during the aging process, the vinegar itself does ferment.  As part of its aging, the cellar master, as with fine wines, must evaluate the exact amount of fermentation as the vinegar passes through the five barrels:  oak, chestnut, cherry, ash and finally mulberry, before being bottled. A young balsamic vinegar will rarely be less than five years old. A good twenty-year-old Balsamic vinegar can be more expensive than many good twenty-year-old wines.

   


Médaillons de Filet de Bœuf
These three cuts together will weigh less than 6 or 7 ounces,
(170 to 200 grams).
Photograph courtesy of www.boeufinfo.org/

 

Tartare de Filet Mignon de Bœuf – A Beef or Steak Tartar. The best Tartar will be cut from the end of the tenderloin; no better cut could be used for a steak Tartar.

Tartare: Tartar.  Steak Tatar is a classic French dish made from finely chopped or ground raw beef. While it's a French restaurant staple, its name has a much more exotic and debated origin.  The Tartars were renowned and formidable fighters who emerged from central Asia and rode to war under the command of Genghis Khan in the 13th century.   Twentieth-century folklore has the Tartar tribesmen riding to war with raw meat under their horses' saddles, to tenderize the meat as they rode.  As they rode, they were said to cut off pieces of the raw meat with a knife and eat as they rode; they only stopped riding to sleep. Despite the story, Steak Tartar (Tartare) is far from any authentic Tartar culinary traditions.

Regardless of the myth the dish as we know it today is an actual French creation. It is typically prepared with high-quality, hand-chopped fillet steak, seasoned with capers, shallots, Dijon mustard, Worcestershire sauce, and often topped with a raw egg yolk.  Further additions depend on the chef. This meticulous preparation and elegant presentation make steak tartare one of the most celebrated and luxurious raw meat dishes in French cuisine. If the menu listing offers Steak Tartare Servi Cru ou Juste Saisi, then you know that there is an option for the diner to have their  Steak Tatare very lightly fried.  Many restaurants offer this option either on or off the menu.

Juste Saisi means just ready or lightly seared, and it's a very important cooking term for meat, fish, seafood, and other products that must never be overcooked, or hardly cooked at all.     Despite my personal preference for the classic Steak Tartare, there are others, including French diners who, while not wanting a hamburger, do not want the meat completely raw.  If you prefer your steak tartare not completely raw, ask the server when you order for "just saisi."

 


A steak Tatar.
Photograph courtesy of Joselu Blanco
https://www.flickr.com/photos/silverman68/6661991137/  

Filet Mignon on French Menus


 Filet Mignon de Porc Jus a l'Estragon – A filet mignon or pork served with a sauce made from the natural cooking juices and flavored with tarragon.

Estragon: Tarragon is one of France's favorite herbs. Fresh tarragon leaves will be in salads, salad dressings, sauces, soups, egg dishes and tomato dishes, and it is a key ingredient in herbal butters and certain vinegars. Tarragon will also be accenting many meat and fish recipes. Tarragon's aroma reflects its mild aniseed taste that adds a pleasant bittersweet flavor.  While I do not like heavily accented aniseed dishes or pastries very much, tarragon is perfect.

Tarragon is an essential part of France's most well-known herb group Les Fine Herbes and is the star ingredient in Sauce Béarnaise. French bouquets garni nearly always include tarragon, and tarragon is often included in the Provencal herb group, the Herbes de Provence. Tarragon adds a flavor that can be identified as French, though few first-time visitors to France can identify it by name. 

 

Filet Mignon De Veau Charolais, Son Jus Aux Escargots Du Brionnais Et Porto Rouge – A cut from a tenderloin of Charolaise veal served with a sauce made from the natural cooking juices and large-sized farmed petit gris snails, Burgundy, and a red Port wine.

Charolais: The Charolaise AOP cattle were the third breed to receive an AOC for their consistently high quality.   To that French AOC has been added the Pan-European AOP.

Escargots Du Brionnais: Ordering snails in France should not be strange. If you like seafood such as mussels, conchs, winkles, and periwinkles etc., you'll likely appreciate escargots, as they all belong to the same family as snails. They are very close family members.  "Escargots du Brionnais" are a brand from a snail farm close to a village in the Brionnais region of Burgundy, France.

The Brionnais are "gros gris," which translates as the "large grey," though they from the family of the petit gris, the smaller of the two snails that are popular in France.

The French know a thing or two about good food, and snails are considered to be among the tastiest members of their extended family.  The central and very obvious difference is that escargots grow on land and not in the sea.

The meat of all snails and their seafood family members is similar; however, when asked, I do not say they taste like chicken! Although the sauce and cooking method, like many chicken dishes, may change the taste of your escargots. The texture of snail meat is similar to that of their family members, so in France, think of mussels or the popular sea snails, bulots (whelks) or bigorneaux (periwinkles).  

If you like mussels and or cockles, you will love snails, and if you have been to the Caribbean and enjoyed conchs, you will love France's snails even more.

 

Filet Mignon De Veau, Fricassée De Rattes Et Eryngii, Sauce Au Vin Rouge Et Morilles – A  veal filet mignon alongside a stew of ratte potatoes and farmed King Trumpet Oyster mushrooms served with a sauce made with red wine and wild morel mushrooms.

      Pommes de Terre Ratte or La Ratte: A small French potato, also called the Asparge Potato. It is not a new variety in France but a born-again potato. This potato originally came from Denmark and went out of fashion for a few years. The Ratte was reintroduced and is again much appreciated for its taste and smooth, slightly buttery texture; its name will be on many menus.

      In French, ratte does mean a rat or possibly a mouse; however, that just refers to its uncooked form. With a bit of imagination, these potatoes may resemble a crouching mouse. This potato's fame is in the taste, not the name.

     Now, to decide whether the English translation of a ratte should be a mouse or a rat, look at Umberto Eco’s book, A Mouse or Rat: Translation as Negotiation.

 


The Ratte du Touquet
This is a commercial brand of the Ratte potato only grown in the north of France.
Ratte Potatoes.
Photograph courtesy of Wikipedia


 Eringy or Pleurote du Panicaut: The King Oyster mushroom or King Trumpet Mushroom is the largest and meatiest of the family of oyster mushrooms. It tastes and looks very different from the rest of the family with a much meatier texture and a different taste. The King Oyster is a mushroom that can be grilled, roasted, sautéed, and is often part of stir-fried recipes. Unlike some other mushrooms, which have tough stems, this mushroom is different, and its meaty stem makes it a popular addition to vegetarian or vegan dishes. It can be sliced lengthwise and grilled like a steak, shredded, or cut into rounds that look like imitation scallops.

Morille: Morels are a prized family of tasty mushrooms with a decidedly different look to most other mushrooms and a slightly nutty taste. Morels lack the gills and domed caps of many other mushrooms, but they all have white to ivory-coloured stems and a honeycombed conical cap.  Dried morel' caps, which you may see in the market, appear tube-shaped due to the drying process. However, when rehydrated, the conical cap returns. The morels' taste and texture make them a French favorite; they are served fresh from early spring through to the beginning of June. (The idea that Morel stems are not edible is an urban legend, though they are tougher than the cap and require a longer cooking time.)

 

More French confusion in US Kitchens

Another example of confusion that arises with the use of French in the US kitchen is the use of the word entree. Entrée in French means “the entrance, the beginning.”  Following on that entrée in France is used for the first course. In the USA they took the French word entrée and lost the accent over the ‘é’ and use entree for the main course!
It is a testament to George Bernard Shaw's observation that “England and America are "two countries separated by a common language."
 

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Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman
behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com
Copyright 2010, 2016, 2025.

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