No. 1414

Noisettes of Tenderloin of Beef a la Magny

Noisettes de Filet de Boeuf a la Magny

Prepare and cook the noisettes of tenderloins the same way as explained in No. 1410; when done lay them on a dish, and place on top of each noisette a thin slice of fattened goose liver (foiesgras d'oie). Pour over a sauce allemande (No. 407), mixing in with it a quarter of its quantity of grated parmesan cheese. Besprinkle with more grated cheese, baste over with a little melted butter and brown in a quick oven or under a gas salamander (Fig. 123).

← No. 1413 Noisettes of Tenderloin of Beef a la Fleuret Beef No. 1415 Noisettes of Tenderloin of Beef a la Maire →

For the Modern Kitchen

A gratinéed tournedos from Ranhofer's Delmonico's kitchen: small rounds of tenderloin, foie gras, a rich egg-thickened velouté and cheese, flashed under high heat. The whole thing hinges on speed at the end, since everything on the plate is already cooked.

What the cross-reference meansNo. 1410 is the base preparation: noisettes are small rounds cut from the trimmed tenderloin, seasoned and sautéed quickly in butter. The exact size and method are set out in that entry, not this one. Cook them a shade under your target doneness, because they get a second blast of heat at the end.
Sauce allemandeNo. 407 is a veal or chicken velouté finished with an egg-yolk-and-cream liaison, sharpened with lemon. It must not boil after the yolks go in or it will curdle; hold it below a simmer. A modern cook without a stockpot running can build it from a good unsalted chicken stock, a blond roux and the liaison.
Quick oven or salamander"Quick oven" in period usage means a hot one, somewhere in the region of 400-450F. The salamander was a gas-fired overhead griller; a domestic broiler on high, with the rack close, does the same job. This step is measured in a minute or two, not more -- you want colour on the cheese, not a cooked-through sauce.
Parmesan proportion"A quarter of its quantity" is most easily read as a measure rather than a weight: for one cup of sauce, about a quarter cup of grated parmesan, plus more scattered on top. Grate it finely so it melts into the sauce rather than sitting in threads.
Foie gras"Fattened goose liver" here is a thin slice of the liver itself laid on the hot meat, not a pâté; Ranhofer does not say whether it is raw or already cooked. Duck foie gras is more common now than goose. Note that its sale is restricted in some jurisdictions; a slice of good chicken-liver parfait is one possible substitution, though it will soften more under the broiler.
Assembly orderHave the noisettes, foie gras, sauce and cheese all ready before anything goes under heat. Meat sitting in sauce loses its crust, and the sauce breaks if it waits over a flame.
Yield and servingRanhofer gives none. Figure two noisettes per person as a main course, one as a middle course in a longer menu. A whole trimmed tenderloin will give you roughly a dozen, depending on how large you cut them. Serve on croutons or a bed of duchesse potato if you want something under the sauce.

A Little History

"A la Magny" points to the Restaurant Magny in Paris -- on the rue Mazet, which until 1867 was the rue Contrescarpe-Dauphine -- best remembered for the dîners Magny of the 1860s, the fortnightly literary dinners attended by Sainte-Beuve, the Goncourt brothers, Flaubert, Gautier and, at times, Turgenev and George Sand. The name is attached to garnishes in the classical repertoire, though the link to the restaurant is traditional rather than documented, and by the time Charles Ranhofer compiled The Epicurean in 1894 -- setting down some thirty years of menus from Delmonico's in New York -- a French restaurant name carried its own cachet. The dish itself is haute-bourgeois cooking of the period: a small, expensive cut, foie gras laid on top, and a flour-and-yolk sauce gratinéed with parmesan, a combination that reads as heavy now but was the arithmetic of luxury then. Ranhofer's book runs to well over a thousand numbered recipes built on cross-references like this one, on the assumption that the reader had a brigade and a stockpot already at work.