No. 1508

Minced Fillet of Veal, Portuguese

Emince de Filet de Veau a la Portugaise

Chop up one shallot very finely and put it into a saucepan with half a pint of port wine and a finely shredded orange peel, a pint of cayenne pepper, lemon juice and half a pint of espagnole sauce (No. 414); boil and reduce the whole to the consistency of sauce. Heat some cooked veal fillets cut up into slices, dress them in the center of a circle of poached eggs laid on oval-shaped croutons, and place on top of each egg a piece of tongue cut the shape of a crouton; pour the sauce over all.

← No. 1507 Grenadins of Fillet of Veal, Tomatoed Argent Veal No. 1509 Minion Fillets of Veal, with Puree of Artich →

For the Modern Kitchen

A dish built for leftover roast veal, plated as a ring of poached eggs on croûtons with the meat in the middle. Nothing here is difficult, but the ingredient list contains one obvious misprint and assumes a stocked professional larder.

The "pint of cayenne pepper"This is a typesetting error, almost certainly for a pinch. A pint of cayenne would be inedible and the surrounding quantities make no sense with it. Treat it as a pinch, added at the end to taste.
Espagnole sauceNo. 414 is the book's classic brown sauce. A good reduced brown veal stock or a demi-glace concentrate stands in acceptably; half a pint is one cup.
Port and reductionHalf a pint is one cup. Reduce the shallot, port and orange peel hard before the espagnole goes in, or the finished sauce tastes of raw wine. "The consistency of sauce" means it coats a spoon and leaves a clean line.
Orange peelShred only the coloured zest, no pith, and cut it as fine as thread. Left in coarse strips it turns bitter and chewy in a reduction this concentrated.
The vealThe recipe presumes cooked fillet already in hand. Slice it thin and warm it in a little of the sauce or in stock off the boil; veal that is simmered a second time goes dry and grey.
Poached eggs and croûtonsPoach the eggs soft, trim the ragged edges, and cut the croûtons oval and slightly larger than the eggs so they carry them. Fry the croûtons in clarified butter and drain well, or the sauce turns them to sponge.
The tongueCooked, pressed tongue, cut into small ovals to echo the croûton shape. Deli-sliced tongue works; a thin round of good cooked ham can be substituted.
Assembly and yieldAssembly -- Sauce goes over everything at the last moment, so plate the eggs and croûtons only when the sauce is finished. The recipe specifies no quantity of veal and no number of eggs, so no yield can be given.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) records the kitchen of Delmonico's in New York, and this entry shows how that kitchen handled cooked veal fillets: sliced veal, revived by an assertive port-and-orange reduction and dressed up with poached eggs, fried croûtons and tongue until it could be sent to a paying table. The label "à la Portugaise" in nineteenth-century French cookery is loose and is generally said to point principally to tomato, though here it is the shredded orange peel that earns the name. The pattern of a ring of garnish encircling a mound of meat is characteristic of the period, and the misprinted "pint of cayenne pepper" is one of the slips to be found in The Epicurean, a book of nearly twelve hundred pages.