How beef wellington became a British classic
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In 1839, Arthur Wellesley, the first Duke of Wellington, hosted a sumptuous supper to commemorate his victory over Napoleon Bonaparte in 1815, an annual tradition he'd started in 1820. A surviving menu from this banquet shows that his guests tucked into a lavish multi-course feast, but there's one glaring omission: the dish to which to the duke lends his name, beef wellington.
Also known as boeuf en croûte, a traditional beef wellington is generally accepted to mean a large piece of fillet cloaked in finely chopped mushrooms and shallots (duxelles), which some chefs supplement with goose- or duck-liver pâté, encased in puff pastry. It's widely claimed to have been a favourite of the Duke of Wellington, therefore taking its name from him, although there's no solid proof of this.
Regardless, the idea of wrapping cuts of meat in pastry was not a 19th-century invention. Haunches of venison had been baked in pastry crusts for hundreds of years and were referred to as 'pasties'. Robert May, a chef during the Restoration period, provides a recipe instructing readers how to 'bake beef, red-deer fashion in pies or pasties' in his 1660 tome The Accomplisht Cook, which features sirloin baked with spices and butter in a pastry crust. And on 6 September 1662, diarist Samuel Pepys grumbled about being served five venison pasties over the course of a few days.
As for the emergence of the name, the 20th-century German linguist and lexicographer Manfred Höfler has identified a few early references to 'wellington' dishes — including one in Italian created by Roman pastry chef Vincenzo Agnoletti, dating from around 1834. However, Agnoletti's myspaik alla welington appears to be a variation on the traditional British mince pie, containing chopped meat, raisins and rum, cooked in pastry.
By the turn of the 20th century, written references to beef wellington itself began appearing. A menu for a bankers' dinner at the Angelus Hotel in Los Angeles in 1903 is commonly cited as the first, however, it also appeared on the menu aboard the steamship Fürst Bismarck on a voyage from Hamburg to the US on 10 November 1899. Later, Théodore Gringoire and Louis Saulnier include a description of serving beef 'wellington style' in their 1914 book Le Répertoire de la Cuisine, where they refer to duxelles and puff pastry, but provide no recipe per se.
In an for Vogue in March 1944, the Hungarian-born journalist and food writer Iles Brody describes his encounter with the dish: 'When I inherited a little money from my mother, I went mildly berserk and several times ordered steaks at Madame Sacher's famous hostelry in Vienna. They were roast steaks à la wellington — a thick slice of sirloin encased in a piecrust, with mushroom paste between the crust and meat — and they were unbelievably good.'
These incidents perhaps add credence to Francophile US painter and food writer Richard Olney's belief that dishes like beef wellington owe more to international hotel cookery than classic French cuisine. In The French Menu Cookbook (1970), he refers to this as Grand Palace cuisine, in which 'roasts ... are half-cooked, cooled, rolled in pastry and rebaked'.
The popularity of beef wellington took off in the decades immediately after the Second World War, when a slew of recipes appeared in books and magazines on both sides of the Atlantic. In her 2006 book Culinary Pleasures: Cookbooks and the Transformation of British Food, the academic Nicola Humble describes how the late 1950s was a time when food became a way of elevating your social position. 'Entertaining,' she writes, 'took on a new importance, not just for the upper levels of society but in the suburban home, where social success and status depended significantly on the drama and style of your dinner party.' Beef wellington ticked all these boxes — it wasn't a dish for the fainthearted. The ingredients were eye-wateringly expensive and the potential to ruin the dish by under- or overcooking it was high.
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The skill involved in creating beef wellington is also referenced in Betty Crocker's Hostess Book (1967), where she acknowledges that beef wellington 'demands all of the cook's time and talent', and suggests serving it with tinned vegetables to ensure the focus of the preparation is on the beef, not the garnishes. A 1954 Vogue , meanwhile, provides another hack for reducing the stress of preparation: replacing the traditional fillet with ground beef, creating a meatloaf en croûte.
Other variations on the dish abound, but traditionally it has three key elements: beef, mushrooms and pastry. Ideally, the meat should still be blushingly pink after cooking, so it needs to be a cut that can be cooked quickly while remaining tender. For this reason, fillet (tenderloin) is the usual choice. In a 1965 episode of US TV show The French Chef, Julia Child suggests marinating the fillet to add flavour. However, most recipes simply require the cook to season the meat, then brown it over a high heat before allowing it to cool. Some also brush it with mustard before coating it with the mushrooms and pastry.
At its simplest, the mushroom layer is made from duxelles, which must be fried until the moisture from the fungi has evaporated, however, this is the element where there's perhaps the most variation. René Verdon, the chef for the White House during the administrations of John F Kennedy and Lyndon B Johnson, adds chopped goose livers to his duxelles in The White House Chef Cookbook (1968). Other chefs, meanwhile, favour pâté, whether that's chicken liver or foie gras. Delia Smith adds dried porcini, while Mary Berry opts for parmesan and tarragon. A splash of alcohol never goes amiss, either, with brandy, sherry or madeira being favoured. Some chefs, including James Martin, add spinach into the mix.
Puff pastry is the usual choice for the glossy exterior, however, as the beef should be served medium rare (erring more towards the latter) and has a propensity to ooze juices, there's a risk of the dreaded soggy bottom. Julia Child came up with a unique solution to this problem, arguing that it's impossible to cook both pastry and beef to perfection if the former is raw. She pre-bakes a pastry case base, into which a browned fillet with mushroom-and-foie-gras coating are placed, before topping it with raw pastry and returning it to the oven.
Other chefs, including Gordon Ramsay and James Martin, use a layer of crepes to create a barrier between the pastry and its contents. However, some people find this combination a little on the heavy side, so instead of pancakes use thin slices of charcuterie such as parma ham (as per John Torode and Lisa Faulkner's recipe overleaf).
While by definition a beef wellington does need to feature beef, there have been countless spins on the filling over the years, with all manner of ingredients receiving the wellington treatment. The Hairy Bikers have a version containing pork fillet surrounded by white pudding and stuffing. Jamie Oliver encases a chicken breast stuffed with mushrooms inside a pastry case and serves it with a creamy mustard and white wine sauce. Meat-free variations — particularly popular as Christmas centrepieces — include Rose Elliot's chestnut and red wine pâté en croûte and New York restaurateur Flynn McGarry's beet wellington.
Whatever its origins, beef wellington has stood the test of time, and evolved, too. It's a statement dish that won't fail to impress diners — unless they're Samuel Pepys.
John Torode and Lisa Faulkner's beef wellington recipe
Tender beef, chicken liver pâté and crisp pastry is a great combination — though you can swap the pâté for a mushroom version if you prefer. The middle cut of beef fillet is best here.
Serves:Takes:
1-1.4kg beef fillet, trimmed 50g butter 2 shallots, chopped 15g dried porcini, soaked in 100ml boiling water 2 garlic cloves, grated 225g flat mushrooms, finely chopped 2 tsp fresh thyme leaves, chopped 170g chicken liver pâté 2 x 500g blocks shop-bought or 1kg homemade puff pastry Plain flour, for dusting 160g parma ham slices 1 medium egg, beaten
3. Put the chicken liver pâté in a bowl and beat until smooth. Add the cooled mushroom mixture and stir until thoroughly combined. Season to taste.
6. Brush the pastry with more of the beaten egg and decorate the top with pastry roses if you like (to do this, roll out thin strips of excess pastry, thin out one edge by pressing with your thumb, then twirl and roll each strip into a rose shape with the thumbprint edge uppermost – you can create a few leaves, too).
8. Take the wellington out of the freezer and place on a baking sheet. Cook for 30–40 mins (for medium-rare) or 1 hr (for well done), reducing the temperature to 180C, 160C fan, gas 4 halfway through cooking. Leave to stand for 10 mins, then carve and serve.
Lisa Faulkner (£25, Quadrille).
