Beef Wellington - Wikipedia

Steak dish For other uses, see Beef Wellington (disambiguation). Beef Wellington

A beef Wellington sliced open
Course	Main
Place of origin	England
Serving temperature	Hot
Main ingredients	Beef, shortcrust pastry, duxelles
Media: Beef Wellington

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Beef Wellington is a baked steak dish 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;[1] or coating the beef in mustard. Classical recipes may include pâté.[2]

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.[3]

Naming

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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.[4]

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".[5] 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.[6]

In the 1910 Polish cookbook Uniwersalna książka kucharska ("The Universal Cooking Book") by Maria Ochorowicz-Monatowa (1866–1925), 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".[7][8]

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.[9] 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.[5]

Variations

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In the Food Network show Good Eats, Alton Brown discusses a variant using the cheaper pork tenderloin instead of beef.[10] 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.[11][12]

See also

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• Shooter's sandwich
• List of beef dishes
• List of steak dishes
• Leongatha mushroom murders (2023) involved beef Wellingtons containing death cap mushrooms

References

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1. ^ Oliver, Jamie. "Epic beef wellington recipe". Retrieved 25 January 2025.
2. ^ Blanc, Raymond. "Beef Wellington". Retrieved 25 January 2025.
3. ^ "Beef wellington". BBC Good Food. Retrieved 18 January 2024.
4. ^ Olver, Lynne. "Beef Wellington". The Food Timeline.
5. ^ a b Hyslop, Leah (21 August 2013). "Potted histories: Beef Wellington". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 14 May 2015.
6. ^ "First Class Menu, 10th Nov 1899, Hamburg-America line". menus.nypl.org. Archived from the original on 30 October 2018. Retrieved 29 October 2018.
7. ^ Ochorowicz-Monatowa, Marya (1910). Uniwersalna książka kucharska (in Polish). Lwów; Warszawa-Łódź: Księgarnia H. Altenberga; Ludwik Fiszer. pp. 52, 304.
8. ^ "Marya Ochorowicz-Monatowa "Uniwersalna książka kucharska"". Salon tradycji polskiej (in Polish). Muzeum Lwowa i Kresów. Archived from the original on 16 February 2019.
9. ^ Small, Sidney Herschel (9 January 1930). "Custom Built". Chicago Daily Tribune. p. 27. ProQuest 181103725.
10. ^ Brown, Alton (30 May 2015). "Tender is the Pork". Food Network. Retrieved 24 November 2022.
11. ^ "Vegan Beet Wellington". Gordon Ramsay Restaurants. Retrieved 30 August 2024.
12. ^ "Pressure Test: Flynn McGarry's Beet Wellington". IMDb. Retrieved 30 August 2024.

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Dishes	Beefsteak List of steak dishes Balbacua Blanquette de veau Beef olives Beef Wellington Beef bourguignon Beef bun Beef Manhattan Beef noodle soup Beef on weck Beef Stroganoff Bistek Boiled beef Bruscitti Bulgogi Bulalo Cachopo Calf's liver and bacon Calf's liver in French cuisine Cansi Chateaubriand (dish) Cheesesteak Chicken-fried steak Cordon bleu Daube Dendeng Feu French dip Ginger beef Galbi Gored gored Gyūdon Hayashi rice Hamburg steak Hortobágyi palacsinta Iga penyet Italian beef Jellied veal Kalio Karađorđeva šnicla Kare-kare Kitfo London broil Mechado Mongolian beef Neobiani Nilagang baka Ossobuco Pares Pho Pot roast Pozharsky cutlet Puchero P'tcha Ragout fin Rawon Rendang Roast beef Roast beef sandwich Ropa vieja Salisbury steak Saltimbocca Selat solo Sha cha beef Suea rong hai Shooter's sandwich Soup Number Five Steak and kidney pudding Steak Diane Steak and eggs Steak and oyster pie Steak au poivre Tapa Tartare Tafelspitz Tiyula itum Tongseng Veal Milanese Veal Orloff Veal Oscar Vitello tonnato Wallenbergare
Related meats	American bison Beefalo Water buffalo Żubroń
Other	Bovine spongiform encephalopathy Beef hormone controversy Beef ring Carcass grade Darkcutter Meat on the bone Ractopamine - Beef US beef imports Japan Taiwan South Korea (2008 US beef protest in South Korea)

v t e English cuisine
Roman times	Dishes Sausages
Middle Agesto 15th century	Exemplars Utilis Coquinario (c. 1300) The Forme of Cury (c. 1390) Dishes Apple pie Bacon Banbury cake Cheesecake Custard Game pie Gingerbread Kippers Mince pie Mortis Pasty Pease pudding Pie Pottage
16th century	Exemplars Richard Pynson (The Boke of Cokery, 1500) Thomas Dawson (The Good Huswifes Jewell, 1585) Dishes Black pudding Fruit fool Pancake Scones Syllabub Trifle (without jelly)
17th century	Exemplars Elinor Fettiplace (Receipt Book, 1604) Gervase Markham (The English Huswife, 1615) Robert May (The Accomplisht Cook, 1660) Hannah Woolley (The Queen-like Closet or Rich Cabinet 1670) John Evelyn (Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets 1699) Kenelm Digby (The Closet Opened 1699) Dishes Battalia pie Currant bun Queen of Puddings Sponge cake Sussex pond pudding Sweet and sour Tea
18th century	Exemplars Mary Kettilby (A Collection of Above Three Hundred Receipts in Cookery, Physick and Surgery 1714) Mary Eales (Mrs Mary Eales's Receipts 1718) John Nott (The Cooks and Confectioners Dictionary, 1723) Eliza Smith (The Compleat Housewife 1727) Hannah Glasse (The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy 1747) Ann Cook (Professed Cookery, 1754) Martha Bradley (The British Housewife 1758) Primitive Cookery (1767) Elizabeth Raffald (The Experienced English Housekeeper 1769) Richard Briggs (The English Art of Cookery 1788) William Augustus Henderson (The Housekeeper's Instructor 1791) Dishes Bread and butter pudding Christmas pudding Chutney Curry Cottage or Shepherd's pie Eccles cake Jellied eels Jugged hare Ketchup Marmalade Parkin Piccalilli Pork pie Roast beef Sandwich Scouse Suet pudding Toad in the hole Trifle (with jelly) Welsh rarebit Yorkshire pudding
19th century	Exemplars Maria Rundell (A New System of Domestic Cookery 1806) Martha Brotherton (Vegetable Cookery 1812) Eliza Acton (Modern Cookery for Private Families 1845) Charles Elmé Francatelli (The Modern Cook 1846) Isabella Beeton (Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management 1861) Dishes Bubble and squeak Cauliflower cheese Cobbler Devilled kidneys Faggots Fish and chips Full English breakfast HP Sauce Ice cream cone Lancashire hotpot Potted shrimps Sausage roll Steak and kidney pudding Battenberg cake Eton mess Eve's pudding Jam roly-poly Lardy cake Madeira cake Summer pudding Windsor soup Worcestershire sauce
20th century	Exemplars Florence Petty Elizabeth David (A Book of Mediterranean Food 1950) Dorothy Hartley (Food in England 1954) Constance Spry Fanny Cradock Marguerite Patten Jane Grigson Delia Smith Rick Stein Nigel Slater Keith Floyd Marco Pierre White Nigella Lawson Jamie Oliver Fergus Henderson (The Whole Beast 1999) Gordon Ramsay Gary Rhodes Mary Berry Dishes Bakewell tart Beef Wellington Carrot cake Chicken tikka masala Coronation chicken Crumble Knickerbocker glory Ploughman's lunch Salad cream Sticky toffee pudding Steak Diane
21st century	Exemplars Heston Blumenthal (The Fat Duck) Lizzie Collingham Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (River Cottage) Rachel Khoo Michel Roux Jr. (Le Gavroche) Antony Worrall Thompson Clarissa Dickson Wright (A History of English Food 2011) Dishes Coronation quiche Platinum Pudding
Related	List of English dishes List of English cheeses List of savoury puddings List of sweet puddings Rationing in the United Kingdom