"Cwdjrx _" in ...
> The best quality of beef in the US is the official grade
> US Prime. ... For the home, you usually have to order it
> from a few high end compaies ... For home use, I find the
> best cut for roasting is about the center two pound part of
> the best US prime tenderloin ... A row of truffle pieces
> inserted in the center helps greatly.

I agree. Several (18) years ago, having seen the photo of Filet of Beef in
Aspic "Strasbourgeoise" in the US's _Gourmet Cook Book_ (1950, not the
recent revised edition) for a couple of decades, I thought it was time to
try the dish. (This recipe has more beef filet than Cwdjrx suggested, and
more than a "row" of truffle pieces, in fact it is stuffed with black
truffles, in bulk. Which were expensive in the 1980s, though not as much so
as today. That was during the temporary interval when almost everyone in
the US thought that truffles meant something made out of chocolate.)

Quality local butchers do exist in the US and one happened to be next door
to a source of truffles in Oakland, California. I made an incision down the
filet, stuffed it with a ruinous supply of fresh black truffles peeled and
dipped (parboiled? don't remember) in Madeira, wrapped the filet in caul,
tied it, seared, braised with a little Madeira to medium-rare, cooled,
chilled, surrounded it with a thick blanked of incredibly good Madeira
aspic, laid out on a platter with garnish or two, photographed it (as not
the sort of thing one makes every day, not this one anyway), and took it to
a party where a surprisingly large fraction was consumed by the calculating
Gershon Rabinowitz, a Platonist at the University who engineered sundry
ruses to save face, while relentlessly returning for more. By the time the
party's best-known cook arrived (Paul Bertolli, still at Chez Panisse then),
it was all gone. In fact it went fast, regardless of Rabinowitz's
attentions.

(Another anecdote from the same party is in my amazon.com comments on
Wechsberg's little classic _Blue Trout and Black Truffles_ by the way.)

--Max