Beef Wellington

Beef Wellington is a baked steak dish of English origin, made out of fillet steak and duxelles wrapped in shortcrust pastry. Some recipes include wrapping the contents in prosciutto, or dry-cured ham, which helps retain moisture while preventing the pastry from becoming soggy; use of puff pastry; and/or coating the beef in mustard. Classical recipes may include pâté.

A whole tenderloin may be wrapped and baked, and then sliced for serving, or the tenderloin may be sliced into individual portions before wrapping and baking.

Naming

While historians generally believe that the dish is named after Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, the precise origin of the name is unclear and no definite connection between the dish and the duke has been found.

Leah Hyslop, writing in ''The Daily Telegraph'', observed that by the time Wellington became famous, meat baked in pastry was a well-established part of English cuisine, and that the dish's similarity to the French ''filet de bœuf en croûte'' (fillet of beef in pastry) might imply that "beef Wellington" was a "timely patriotic rebranding of a trendy continental dish". However, she cautioned, there are no 19th-century recipes for the dish. There is a mention of "fillet of beef, à la Wellington" in the ''Los Angeles Times'' of 1903, and an 1899 reference in a menu from the Hamburg-America line.

In the Polish classic cookbook, finished in 1909 and published for the first time in 1910, by Maria Ochorowicz-Monatowa (1866-1925), ''Uniwersalna książka kucharska'' ("The Universal Cooking Book"), there is a recipe for "Polędwica wołowa à la Wellington" (beef fillet ''à la'' Wellington). The recipe does not differ from the dish later known under this name. It is a beef filet enveloped together with duxelles in puff pastry, baked, and served with a truffle or Madeira sauce. The author, who mastered her cooking skills both in Paris and Vienna at the end of the 19th century, claimed that she had received this recipe from the cook of the imperial court in Vienna. She also included "filet à la Wellington" in the menus proposed for the "exquisite dinners".

In '' Le Répertoire de la Cuisine'' a professional reference cookbook published by Théodore Gringoire and Louis Saulnier in 1914, there is mentioned a garnish "Wellington" to beef, described as: "''Fillet browned in butter and in the oven, coated in poultry stuffing with dry duxelles added, placed in rolled-out puff pastry. Cooked in the oven. Garnished with peeled tomatoes, lettuce, Pommes château''".

An installment of a serialized story entitled "Custom Built" by Sidney Herschel Small in 1930 had two of its characters in a restaurant in Los Angeles that had "beef Wellington" on its menu. The first occurrence of the dish recorded in the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' is a quotation from a 1939 New York food guide with "Tenderloin of Beef Wellington" which is cooked, left to cool, and rolled in a pie crust.

Variations

In the Food Network show '' Good Eats'', Alton Brown discusses a variant using the cheaper pork tenderloin instead of beef. A common vegetarian variation of the dish, known as "beet Wellington", replaces the beef with beetroot and has been featured on food competition shows such as ''MasterChef Australia''.

See also

* Shooter's sandwich
* List of beef dishes
* List of steak dishes

References

{{English cuisine

Baked foods
British cuisine
British pork dishes
British beef dishes
British-Australian culture
British-New Zealand culture
British-Canadian culture
British-South African culture
Canadian cuisine
Australian cuisine
New Zealand cuisine
South African cuisine
Saint Helenian cuisine
Dinner
Meals