Home › Entrées › Deviled Mignons of Beef
Deviled Mignons of Beef
Cut tenderloin steak three fourths inch thick. Cut and roll in rounds, broil over clear fire five minutes. Mix one tablespoon mustard, one tablespoon Worcestershire Sauce, and two tablespoons chopped pimento. Spread on beef, dip in fine bread crumbs, and broil until crumbs are brown. Serve with Béarnaise Sauce.
A two-stage broil: the steaks are cooked most of the way through first, then coated and returned to the fire only long enough to brown the crumbs. Judge the first stage short, because the second adds heat.
- "Cut and roll in rounds"The tenderloin is cut into 3/4-inch slices and then evidently shaped into neat circles; the recipe does not say how, but a tail of meat curled round and tied, or the slice pressed round between the palms, would answer. Any string is best left until after the final browning.
- A clear fireA fire burned down past the flames and smoke to steady, glowing coals. Under a modern gas or electric broiler, preheat fully and set the rack about 3 inches from the element.
- Five minutes is for rareFive minutes total over live coals on a 3/4-inch medallion, turned once, leaves the centre red. Since the meat goes back under heat for the crumbs, pull it well short of where you want it — around 115-120F internal for a final medium-rare.
- MustardMost likely prepared mustard rather than dry powder: a tablespoon of paste is what makes the coating spreadable and glues the crumbs on. English or Dijon both suit the amount of Worcestershire here.
- PimentoSweet red pepper preserved in brine, sold canned or in jars. Drain and blot it dry before chopping, or the coating will be too wet for the crumbs to stick.
- Fine bread crumbsDry, sieved white crumbs, not panko or coarse fresh crumbs. Press them on firmly and give the medallions only a minute or two per side under high heat; the crumbs colour fast and burnt crumbs will carry through the whole plate.
- BéarnaiseB eseparately and served separately; hold it barely warm, as too much heat will curdle and split it. A split sauce can sometimes be brought back by whisking it into a fresh yolk or a little warm water, but it is easier not to overheat it.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield. Reckon one medallion per person as an entrée, a few if it is the main dish, and judge the sauce and coating quantities against the number of rounds you cut.
"Mignon" is simply French for small and dainty, and by the time Lowney's Cook Book appeared, filet mignon was a familiar American restaurant cut for exactly the sort of small, sauced, individually plated course that filled the entrée section of a formal menu. "Deviled" is older and English: from roughly the eighteenth century onward it meant food made hot with mustard, cayenne or a peppery bottled sauce, usually with a crumb coating browned at the fire. The Worcestershire here is the tell — the sauce had spread from Britain through American kitchens over the second half of the nineteenth century and was a convenient shortcut to a deviled flavour. Pairing a deviled crust with béarnaise, a rich tarragon butter sauce, is characteristic of the period's cooking-school style, which happily set an English chophouse treatment on the same plate as a French sauce and thought nothing of it.