No. 1402

Minions of Tenderloin of Beef a la Dumas

Mignons de Filet de Boeuf a la Dumas

When the minions are prepared and cooked as for plain (No. 1399), lay each one on a round slice of unsmoked but cooked beef tongue; let these be the same diameter as the minion and three-sixteenths of an inch in thickness. Reduce a veloute (No. 415) and soubise sauce (No. 543) to half, and when ready to serve thicken it with egg-yolks, raw cream, and a piece of fresh butter. Cover the minions with this sauce, strew over grated fresh bread-crumbs and grated parmesan cheese, and sprinkle with clarified butter; brown in a very hot oven or under a gas salamander (Fig. 123), and garnish the dish with ham croquettes shaped like small crescents, then serve.

Ham Croquettes.—Have a quarter of a pound of cooked ham cut in one-eighth squares. A quarter of a pound of mushrooms cut the same dimensions from which you will have pressed out all the moisture, add a little reduced bechamel (No. 409), and season with pepper and nutmeg (no salt). Put on the fire, and when cooked lay them on a dish to get cold, then divide the preparation into balls each an inch in diameter; roll them longways and shape them into crescents, dip them in beaten eggs, roll them in grated bread-crumbs and fry them in hot fat a fine color.

← No. 1401 Minions of Tenderloin of Beef a la Cheron Beef No. 1403 Minions of Tenderloin of Beef a la Fearing →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with stockpots already on the stove, so the recipe is mostly assembly instructions pointing at other numbers in the book. Read it as a plated composition: seared medallion, tongue base, enriched sauce, gratinated top, croquette garnish.

Mignons"Minions" is Ranhofer's anglicisation of mignons de filet — medallions cut from the tenderloin. No. 1399 is the "plain" preparation he refers back to; this entry itself specifies neither size nor degree of doneness.
The hinge: the liaisonThe reduced velouté and soubise are finished with egg yolks, cream and butter off the heat. Once the yolks go in the sauce must not boil or it will curdle and break under the gratin. Hold it below a simmer and use it at once.
Soubise and veloutéSoubise is an onion purée bound with béchamel or rice; velouté here is a white veal or chicken stock sauce thickened with blond roux. Reducing the mixture by half gives you a coating consistency thick enough to sit on the meat rather than run off it.
Cooked unsmoked tongueFresh (unsmoked) beef tongue, simmered until tender, peeled, pressed and chilled, then cut in rounds three-sixteenths of an inch thick — call it a scant quarter inch. Delicatessen pickled or smoked tongue will overwhelm the sauce; a slice of cooked veal or a thick round of cooked ham is the nearest substitute if fresh tongue is unavailable.
SalamanderThe gas salamander is an overhead radiant grill. A domestic broiler at its highest setting, with the rack close to the element, does the same job. Ranhofer gives no temperature; "a very hot oven" is conventionally read as somewhere around 450–500F. Either way the browning here is a matter of a minute or two under direct heat, not oven time — the beef is already cooked.
Ham croquette dice"Cut in one-eighth squares" means eighth-inch dice, for both ham and mushrooms. The instruction to press all moisture from the mushrooms is not optional: wet mushrooms make a filling that will not hold a crescent shape and will burst in the fryer.
No salt in the croquettesRanhofer's parenthesis is deliberate. Cured ham, reduced béchamel and, on the plate, parmesan all bring salt; the croquettes are seasoned only with pepper and nutmeg.
FryingDeep fry at 350–360F until deep gold, about two minutes. The filling is fully cooked already, so the goal is colour and a set crust. Chill the shaped crescents thoroughly before breading.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it is built like a reference work rather than a cookbook: over three thousand numbered entries that cross-refer to one another, so that a single dish assumes you already have velouté, soubise and béchamel to hand. The name à la Dumas is generally taken as a nod to Alexandre Dumas père, whose posthumous Grand Dictionnaire de cuisine (1873) made him a figure of some standing among professional cooks; French kitchens of the period attached the names of writers, singers and patrons to garnishes freely, and the label indicates a fixed combination rather than any recipe Dumas himself wrote. The construction is thoroughly of its moment — a tournedos set on a base (here tongue rather than the more usual crouton), masked in a sauce enriched to the point of near-collapse, gratinated, and ringed with a fried garnish shaped by hand into crescents. That last detail, shaping croquettes to a form, is a reminder that Delmonico's plating was done by cooks who had time and staff to spend on it.