Meat Dishes
Tournedos Rossini
Escoffier’s grandest steak: seared beef fillet on a butter-fried croûton, crowned with seared foie gras and black truffle slices, all served with a rich Madeira sauce in the demi-glace style. Preserved summer truffle keeps the cost within reach.
- Serves 4
- Prep 25 min
- Cook about 45 min
- French
Method
Get ready: let the steaks come out of the fridge half an hour before they go in the pan. If they are not neatly round, tie a loop of kitchen string around the middle of each so they keep their shape. Cut the bread into rounds the same width as the steaks (a 7 cm cutter suits most), leaving the crusts behind. Leave the foie gras in the fridge until the last minute, and put the plates to warm in a low oven, 100°C (80°C fan).
Start the sauce: melt the 10 g of butter in a small pan over a medium-low heat and cook the shallot gently for about 5 minutes, until soft but not coloured. Stir in the tomato purée and cook it for a minute. Pour in the 150 ml of Madeira and let it bubble down until only a few spoonfuls of syrupy liquid remain.
Add the 400 ml of stock and simmer briskly until it has reduced by about half, 15–20 minutes. Stir the cornflour paste, whisk it in and let it bubble for a minute or two: the sauce should now lightly coat the back of a spoon, like a thin demi-glace. Strain it into a clean pan, add the chopped truffle with any juice and set aside off the heat.
Croûtons: melt the 40 g of butter in a large frying pan over a medium heat. When it foams, fry the bread rounds for 1–2 minutes a side, until crisp and golden all over, adding a little more butter if the pan runs dry. Drain on kitchen paper and keep them warm in the low oven.
Steaks: pat the steaks dry and season them generously. Wipe out the pan, heat it until very hot, add the oil and lay in the steaks. Leave them alone for about 3 minutes, until a dark crust has formed, then turn and give the second side another 3 minutes for medium-rare (about 4 minutes a side for medium), holding each steak on its edge for a few seconds to brown the sides. In the final minute, drop in the 20 g of butter and baste the steaks with it, then move them to a warm plate to rest for 5 minutes.
Foie gras: while the steaks rest, season the slices and dust them lightly with the flour, patting off any excess. Heat a second frying pan until very hot, with no fat at all, because foie gras gives out plenty of its own. Sear the slices for about 45 seconds to 1 minute a side, until well browned outside but still soft when pressed. Lift onto kitchen paper.
Finish the sauce: tip the fat out of the steak pan, return it to a medium heat and pour in the 2 tbsp of Madeira, scraping up the browned bits from the bottom. Add the sauce base and any juices from the resting steaks and bring to a simmer. Take the pan off the heat and beat in the cold butter a couple of cubes at a time, until the sauce turns glossy. Taste, and add salt only if it needs it.
To serve: set a croûton on each warm plate and spoon a little sauce over it so it soaks in. Snip the string off the steaks and put one on each croûton, then top with a slice of foie gras and two slices of truffle. Spoon a little more sauce around and pass the rest separately in a warm sauceboat.
Tip: tap a step to tick it off as you cook.
More on the sauce: our Demi-glace and Quick Demi-glace recipes.
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See also
Chef’s notes
- Truffle on a budget: a small jar of preserved black summer truffle costs a fraction of fresh winter (Périgord) truffle, and it is what the cost box prices; the juice in the jar goes into the sauce. Cheaper still, stir a teaspoon or two of black truffle paste into the finished sauce and leave off the slices, or leave the truffle out altogether for a classic steak with Madeira sauce.
- You will not usually find foie gras in a supermarket; specialist online suppliers sell it frozen, ready sliced. For a gentler, cheaper version, spread a thick layer of good duck liver pâté on each croûton instead, as James Martin does, or leave it out.
- Have demi-glace in the freezer? Use it instead of the stock and cornflour: add about half as much demi-glace as the stock in the list to the reduced Madeira and simmer for a few minutes. Our Quick Demi-glace is a 30-minute version.
- Escoffier brushed his croûtons with melted meat glaze. Spooning a little of the finished sauce onto each croûton before the steak goes on does the same job.
- Make ahead: the sauce base (steps 2 and 3) keeps in the fridge for 2 days; reheat it gently before step 7. The croûtons can be fried an hour ahead and crisped in the oven.
- Most of the estimated cost is the foie gras and the truffle; leave them out and it drops to the price of a fillet steak dinner.
About this dish
Tournedos Rossini is named after Gioachino Rossini (1792–1868), the Italian composer of The Barber of Seville, who gave up writing operas in mid-career and spent his last years in Paris (1855–1868), where he was known as much for his love of food as for his music.
The earliest printed recipe we have found is Escoffier’s, in Le Guide Culinaire (1903). He sautés the tournedos and sets them on fried croûtons brushed with melted meat glaze, tops each with an escalope of foie gras cooked in butter and slices of truffle, deglazes the pan with Madeira and finishes with a demi-glace flavoured with truffle essence. The English edition, A Guide to Modern Cookery (1907, No. 1126), keeps the steak, croûton, foie gras and truffle but leaves out the sauce.
Who invented the dish is not recorded. English-language sources credit Marie-Antoine Carême, Adolphe Dugléré of the Café Anglais or Escoffier himself; French sources also name Casimir Moisson of the Maison Dorée and Modeste Magny, and note that no documents from the time settle it. Carême died in 1833, and the French national dictionary (TLF) first records tournedos as a dish in 1864.
The name has its own stories. In one, Rossini asked Dugléré to finish his fillet at the table and, when the chef objected, told him to do it with his back turned (“tournez-moi le dos”). In another, retold by NPR, Rossini’s butler had to turn his back on the guests to hide the final touches. Neither story is proven.
Sources: Escoffier, Le Guide Culinaire (1903), p. 612, Wikisource, Escoffier, A Guide to Modern Cookery (1907), No. 1126, Project Gutenberg, NPR: Composers in the Kitchen: Gioachino Rossini’s Haute Cuisine (2010), Wikipedia: Tournedos Rossini, Wikipédia (French): Tournedos Rossini, Wikipedia: Adolphe Dugléré, Wikipedia: Marie-Antoine Carême, Wikipedia: Gioachino Rossini, CNRTL: Trésor de la langue française, “tournedos”.
How this recipe was developed
A new page. We started from Escoffier’s own recipe, in the French original and the English edition, compared it with the best-rated modern versions from BBC Food and NYT Cooking, and wrote our own method.
- Escoffier’s build. His No. 1126 sets the tournedos on fried croûtons and tops each with a floured, butter-fried slice of foie gras and a slice of truffle. The 1903 French text adds melted meat glaze on the croûtons and a Madeira deglazing with truffle-flavoured demi-glace, which the English edition leaves out. We follow the French.
- A demi-glace-style sauce at home. James Martin (BBC Food, 4.9/5 from 11 ratings) reduces Madeira, red wine and stock and whisks in butter. We reduce Madeira and stock with shallot and a little tomato purée and give it body with a spoonful of cornflour, as our Quick Demi-glace does, so it coats like a demi-glace without a day of stock-making.
- Deglaze the steak pan. NYT Cooking (Jeff Gordinier, 4/5 from 284 ratings) deglazes the steak pan with Madeira and builds the sauce there, which picks up the meat juices. We do the same.
- Watch the salt. Several NYT Cooking reviewers found the sauce too salty with concentrated demi-glace. We use stock, low-salt if bought, and season only at the end.
- Croûtons and foie gras. NYT Cooking fries bread trimmed to the size of the steaks; BBC Food uses brioche. We fry 1 cm rounds of firm white bread. Escoffier fries the floured foie gras in butter; NYT Cooking sears it briefly over a high heat. We dust it with flour as Escoffier does, then give 1.5 cm slices under a minute a side in a dry, very hot pan.
- Affordable truffle. Preserved black summer truffle (priced in the cost box), truffle paste, or no truffle at all: see the Chef’s notes.
Sources we compared (ratings as shown on each site on 2 November 2026):
- Auguste Escoffier: Le Guide Culinaire (1903), Tournedos Rossini (Wikisource)
- Auguste Escoffier: A Guide to Modern Cookery (1907), No. 1126 Tournedos Rossini (Project Gutenberg)
- 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)
This is an original Cookeryonline recipe written in our own words. Ingredient choices and techniques are credited above; no source text has been copied.