Meat Dishes
Filets Mignons Lili
The grand Edwardian way with beef fillet: seared steaks set on crisp rounds of pommes Anna, crowned with an artichoke bottom, a slice of pan-fried foie gras and black truffle, with a glossy Madeira and truffle sauce on the side.
- Serves 4
- Prep 40 min
- Cook about 1 hr
- French
Method
Pommes Anna: heat the oven to 200 °C (fan 180 °C), gas 6. Peel the potatoes and trim them into cylinders about 6 cm across, so the slices end up the same size as the steaks. Slice them 2 mm thick, ideally on a mandoline. Do not rinse them: the starch helps the layers stick together.
Brush four 7–8 cm metal rings and a lined baking tray with clarified butter and stand the rings on the tray. Layer the slices in overlapping circles inside the rings, brushing every layer with butter and seasoning every other one. Press down firmly, pour over any butter left, and bake for 35–40 minutes, until a knife slides through easily and the edges are deep golden. Keep warm. (No rings? Bake the potatoes as one cake in a buttered 20 cm ovenproof frying pan and stamp out rounds.)
Sauce: melt the 15 g butter in a small pan and soften the shallots gently for 5 minutes without colouring. Stir in the tomato purée and bay leaf and cook for a minute, then add the Madeira and red wine and boil until only about 4 tablespoons are left.
Add the stock and boil until reduced to about 200 ml and lightly syrupy, 15–20 minutes. Strain into a clean small pan, add the chopped truffle and its juice, season, and keep warm. Do not add the cold butter yet.
Take the steaks out of the fridge 30 minutes before cooking, pat them dry and season well. Heat a heavy frying pan until very hot, add the oil and sear the steaks for 2½–3 minutes a side for medium-rare, turning them often if you like (frequent turning gives an even crust and an evenly pink centre). Add the 15 g butter for the last minute and spoon it over. Rest the steaks on a warm plate for 5 minutes.
Warm the artichoke bottoms in the steak pan for about 2 minutes, turning them in the buttery juices. Wipe the pan out and heat it until very hot, with no fat. Season the foie gras and sear for 30–45 seconds a side, until browned outside but still soft. Drain on kitchen paper.
Just before serving, bring the sauce back to a simmer, take it off the heat and whisk in the cold butter a few pieces at a time until glossy.
On each warm plate, set a round of pommes Anna, then a steak, then an artichoke bottom with a slice of foie gras in its hollow, and finally a slice of truffle. Serve the sauce separately in a warm sauceboat, or spoon a little round each plate.
Tip: tap a step to tick it off as you cook.
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Chef’s notes
- Foie gras is sold frozen by specialist suppliers rather than supermarkets. For a gentler and much cheaper version, use a thick slice of duck liver parfait on each artichoke instead (it does not need frying), or leave it out.
- The truffle can be left out too: the sauce is still good as a classic Madeira sauce.
- Beef fillet is easier to cook evenly if it is tied with string round its middle; snip the string off before serving.
- The cost shown includes foie gras and preserved black summer truffle, which make up most of it.
From Escoffier to the Titanic
Auguste Escoffier listed this dish as Tournedos Lili in Le Guide Culinaire (1903; English translation A Guide to Modern Cookery, 1907, No. 1101). His tournedos are fried in butter and set on rounds of pommes Anna cut to the same size; each one is topped with an artichoke bottom holding a slice of foie gras tossed in butter and a slice of truffle, and a reduced, buttered Périgueux sauce (Madeira sauce with truffle) is sent separately.
Filet Mignons Lili was on the first-class dinner menu of RMS Titanic on 14 April 1912, the night the ship struck the iceberg; a copy of that menu survives. We could not find a reliable source for who Lili was, so we have not guessed.
Sources: Escoffier, A Guide to Modern Cookery (1907), No. 1101 Tournedos Lili, via Culinary Explorer, Escoffier No. 47 Périgueux Sauce, Titanic Belfast: the 14 April 1912 first-class dinner menu.
How this recipe was developed
The old Cookeryonline page reproduced a recipe from a 1997 book, so we wrote a new one. We went back to Escoffier’s original and compared it with the best-rated modern versions of the closely related Tournedos Rossini, a Downton Abbey cookbook adaptation, and Heston Blumenthal’s steak method.
- Escoffier’s order and sauce. The build (potato, steak, artichoke, foie gras, truffle) and the buttered Périgueux-style sauce served on the side come from Escoffier’s Tournedos Lili (No. 1101) and his Périgueux sauce (No. 47).
- A home Madeira sauce. Instead of making Escoffier’s half-glaze, we reduce Madeira, red wine and stock and whisk in cold butter, as James Martin does in his Tournedos Rossini for BBC Food (4.9/5 from 11 ratings).
- Fast, dry-pan foie gras. The New York Times Cooking Tournedos Rossini (4/5 from 284 ratings) sears the foie gras very briefly in a hot pan. Its reviewers warn about over-salty sauce made with concentrated demi-glace, so we use plain stock and season at the end.
- Potatoes the size of the steaks. The Downton Abbey cookbook version bakes pommes Anna in rings the size of the tournedos and uses jarred artichoke bottoms. We do both, as Escoffier also stamps his potatoes to size.
- Even searing. Heston Blumenthal’s perfect-steak method turns the steak frequently in a very hot pan for an even crust. We offer it as an option.
Sources we compared (ratings as shown on each site on 31 October 2026):
- Auguste Escoffier: A Guide to Modern Cookery (1907), No. 1101 Tournedos Lili
- Auguste Escoffier: A Guide to Modern Cookery (1907), No. 47 Périgueux Sauce
- BBC Food (James Martin): Beef tournedos Rossini with Madeira sauce (4.9/5 from 11 ratings)
- NYT Cooking (Jeff Gordinier): Tournedos Rossini (4/5 from 284 ratings)
- Heston Blumenthal: Heston Blumenthal's perfect steak (SBS Food)
- The Official Downton Abbey Cookbook (extract, Daily Mail) (Annie Gray): Filets mignons lili
This is an original Cookeryonline recipe written in our own words. Ingredient choices and techniques are credited above; no source text has been copied.