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Cooking Steaks
Appears in
By Alastair Little and Richard Whittington
Published 1998
The most expensive cut is fillet, that is the meat found under the blade bone of the loin and a piece of muscle which weighs between 2.3 kg/ 5 lb and 3.2 kg/ 7 lb in a carcass weighing between 225 kg/ 500 lb and 325 kg/ 600 lb-which goes some way towards explaining its price. It is also used to describe the extension of that same muscle which is part of the unboned whole rump, correctly termed the undercut.
The fillet produces at least 4 different steaks:
(1) Châteaubriand is large and thick, weighing at least 450 g/ 1 lb and usually 550 g/ 1¼ lb. This is cooked whole and only to rare and, after resting, is carved at the table for two people, usually accompanied with a béarnaise sauce and pommes frites. It is named after François René, the Vicomte de Châteaubriand, who was French ambassador to London in the 1820s. Apparently it was during his time here that his chef invented béarnaise.
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