No. 1612

Noisettes of Mutton with Cooked Fine Herbs

Noisettes de Mouton aux Fines Herbes Cuites

Pare some mutton fillets, remove all sinews and fat, then cut them up into slices; pare them round: fry in butter, season, drain off the butter and add some cooked fine herbs (No. 385), and half-glaze sauce (No. 413). Dress the meat on round slices of bread cut a quarter of an inch thick by two inches across, fried in butter and laid on a dish; pour the sauce over and serve.

← No. 1611 Noisettes of Mutton, Provencal Style Mutton No. 1613 Paupiettes of Fillet of Mutton a la Delussan →

For the Modern Kitchen

A one-paragraph recipe from Charles Ranhofer that assumes you already have two of its three components standing ready in the kitchen. Sorted out, it is a fast sauté of small loin medallions on fried bread.

What a noisette isA small round medallion cut from the boned loin or fillet, trimmed of all sinew and fat and pared to a neat circle. Ranhofer gives no size for the meat itself, but the bread rounds are specified at two inches across, which suggests medallions of about that width. Lamb loin, boned, is the practical modern substitute for mutton fillet; allow three or four noisettes per person.
"Cooked fine herbs" (No. 385)Not a handful of raw chopped parsley. Ranhofer's fines herbes cuites is a cooked mixture, of the general type of a loose duxelles — typically finely chopped mushrooms and shallots sweated in butter with wine reduced away and parsley added. Check No. 385 for the exact proportions. Make it in advance; it is a component, not a garnish tossed in at the last second.
Half-glaze sauce (No. 413)Demi-glace: brown stock reduced with a little espagnole until it coats a spoon. A good reduced lamb or veal stock, thickened only by reduction, does the same job. You need a few tablespoons, not a ladleful — the sauce should gloss the meat, not flood the croutons.
The hinge: cook the meat fast and rest itThese are thin medallions of a lean muscle. Two to three minutes a side in hot butter, to an internal 130–135F for pink, then let them sit while you build the sauce in the pan. Held any longer over heat they turn grey and dry, and no amount of demi-glace rescues them.
Draining the butter mattersThe frying butter will have browned and taken on fat from the meat; pour it off before the herbs and sauce go in, or the finished sauce breaks greasy. Deglaze the pan with the demi-glace to lift what stuck.
The croutonsRound slices of firm white bread, a quarter inch thick and two inches across, fried in butter until crisp — cut them the same size as the noisettes so each medallion sits squarely on its own. Fry them just before serving; they soften quickly once sauced.
Seasoning"Season" means salt and pepper, applied in the pan. Both the fine herbs and the demi-glace are already seasoned, so salt the meat lightly and taste the assembled sauce before it goes over.
YieldTwo boned lamb loins give roughly eight to twelve noisettes, enough for two or three as a main course with a vegetable alongside.

A Little History

Ranhofer published The Epicurean in 1894 after decades as chef of Delmonico's in New York, and the book is organized as a professional reference rather than a domestic cookbook — which is why this entry can dispose of an entire dish in five lines while pointing to two other numbered recipes for its sauce and its garnish. Noisette means "hazelnut" in French and in butchery denotes a small rounded medallion, generally traced to the shape of the trimmed piece rather than to any flavor. Fines herbes cuites distinguishes the cooked mushroom-and-shallot preparation from raw chopped herbs, a distinction that has largely fallen out of English kitchen usage. The dish also shows how much mutton — meat from an adult sheep, stronger and firmer than lamb — was still taken for granted on an American luxury menu in the 1890s; the whole mutton chapter runs to dozens of preparations, where a modern American restaurant would offer lamb and little else.