No. 1397

Minced Tenderloin, Creole Style

Emince de Filet de Boeuf a la Creole

Cut six ounces of tenderloin of beef lengthwise, shape the slices into escalops an inch and a half in diameter, by an eighth of an inch in thickness. Saute them in butter, when ready take the meat out and keep it warm between two dishes, adding beef stock (No. 194a) with part of its fat, some halved tomatoes peeled, pressed and fried in butter, also some green peppers sliced fine and fried in butter. Season highly, arrange the minced meat in a border of rice boiled in salted water to which half an ounce of butter has been added, and serve.

← No. 1396 Minced Tenderloin a la Beekman Beef No. 1398 Minced Tenderloin of Beef with Potato Croque →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's émincé is not mince in the modern sense — nothing is ground. The dish is a fast sauté of thin beef coins in a tomato-and-pepper pan sauce, ringed with rice, and it lives or dies on how briefly the meat sees heat.

The hinge: the beef goes back at the end, off the boilThe hinge: the beef is held aside while the sauce is built -- Slices an eighth of an inch thick cook through in well under a minute a side. Ranhofer takes the meat out and keeps it warm between two dishes while the tomatoes, peppers and stock go into the pan; if you do return it to the sauce, only to warm through, never to simmer, or the tenderloin turns grey and dry.
"Minced" means thinly slicedÉmincé is from émincer, to slice thin. Cut the six ounces of tenderloin lengthwise into slabs, then trim rounds about 1½ inches across and ⅛ inch thick — a scallop, not a crumb.
Stock No. 194aRanhofer's cross-reference is to one of his numbered beef stocks; the recipe gives no quantity, so add enough to make a pan sauce rather than a soup. "With part of its fat" means don't skim it bare, since the fat is what carries the sauce.
Green peppersIn 1890s New York usage these are almost certainly unripe sweet bell peppers rather than chilies. Sliced fine and fried in butter until soft, they give the Creole note along with the tomatoes.
TomatoesHalve, peel, and press out the seeds and juice before frying, as Ranhofer directs, or the pan sauce will be watery. The recipe says only "some"; a couple of medium tomatoes is about right for this quantity of meat, and out of season, drained canned tomatoes are closer to the intent than pale fresh ones.
"Season highly"Salt and pepper generously; the recipe specifies nothing further, though a pinch of cayenne is a defensible reading of "highly".
The rice borderPlain long-grain rice boiled in salted water with ½ oz (1 tablespoon) butter, then packed into a ring on the platter with the meat and sauce spooned inside. A buttered ring mould, unmoulded onto the dish, does this cleanly.
YieldSix ounces of trimmed tenderloin is a single generous portion or a small course for two. Scale by weight; the sauce quantities follow the meat.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's, and The Epicurean (1894) is his encyclopaedic record of that restaurant's repertoire — over a thousand numbered recipes, cross-referenced to one another like a technical manual. Dishes tagged à la Créole appear throughout it, and in this period the tag often suggests tomatoes and green peppers cooked in fat, though Ranhofer applies it variably — a shorthand borrowed from Louisiana cooking and applied to French technique rather than any specific New Orleans dish. The émincé itself is a classic French restaurant economy: thin scallops of an expensive cut, sautéed to order in minutes, extended by a sauce built in the same pan and framed by a starch border. That last touch — the ring of rice or potato enclosing the meat — is generally taken to have been a common convention of grand-service plating in the 1880s and 1890s, when food was carried to the table on platters and had to hold its shape for the diner to see.