Beef Wellington

Beef Wellington is a baked dish made out of beef tenderloin 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]

The dish is presumably named after Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, but the precise origin of the name is unclear and the connection between them is unknown.^[4]

Leah Hyslop 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]

There is a recipe for Filet à la Wellington in an Austrian cookbook of 1891 consisting of a tenderloin wrapped in pastry, with optional bacon but no mushrooms, and served with truffle sauce or pickles.^[6]

There is an 1899 reference in a menu from the Hamburg-America line.^[7] The earliest US attestation is in 1899^[8]; it also appears in the Los Angeles Times of 1903. A 1910 Polish cookbook includes Polędwica wołowa à la Wellington 'beef fillet à la Wellington' including duxelles, and served with a truffle or Madeira sauce. The author claimed that she had received this recipe from the cook of the imperial court in Vienna.^[9][10]

The 1923 edition of Le Répertoire de la Cuisine, a professional reference cookbook, mentions a "Wellington" recipe for beef: "Barded 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".^[11]

In the Food Network show Good Eats, Alton Brown discusses a variant using the cheaper pork tenderloin instead of beef.^[12] 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.^[13][14]

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