No. 1722

Minion Fillets of Lamb a la Lefort

Filets Mignons d'Agneau a la Lefort

Prepare the meats as for the Benoist (No. 1720), lay them on a dish, pour over a cold cooked marinade (No. 114) and let macerate for one hour, then drain and wipe. Roll them in oil to broil over a brisk fire turning them, and when done lay on a hot dish over slices of bread trimmed to the same shape and size as the noisettes and three-sixteenth of an inch in thickness, fried in clarified butter and glazed over. Set into a sauce-pan half a pint of tomato sauce (No. 549) and half a pint of gravy (No. 404), some branches of parsley, thyme, bay leaf and garlic; reduce this to a third, then strain and return it to the saucepan; at the very first boil take it from the fire and stir in two ounces of minced cepes; pour this over the minion fillets.

← No. 1721 Minion Fillets of Lamb a la Landgrave Lamb No. 1723 Minion Fillets of Lamb As Venison →

For the Modern Kitchen

A Ranhofer entry that leans on three other numbered recipes, so most of the work is reconstructing what they contained. The dish itself is simple: marinated lamb medallions, broiled hard and fast, set on fried croutons under a reduced tomato-and-gravy sauce finished with mushrooms.

What the meat isFilets mignons d'agneau here are noisettes — boneless medallions cut from a trimmed loin or the eye of a rack, trimmed round. The recipe gives no weight of meat and no number of portions; it refers back to No. 1720 for the cut and quantity.
The cold cooked marinadeRanhofer's No. 114 is a cooked marinade — wine and vinegar with aromatic vegetables and herbs — cooled completely before use, as the recipe specifies "cold." Warm marinade on raw lamb is both a food-safety problem and a texture problem. One hour is plenty for meat this small.
Brisk fireA brisk fire means the hottest part of the grill or a broiler at full heat, close to the element. Medallions this size want roughly 2 to 3 minutes a side for an internal 130-135F, pink at the centre — lamb loin cooked through is wasted.
Reduce to a thirdOne pint of sauce total reduced to a third means about two-thirds of a cup left in the pan. This is a real reduction, not a gentle simmer, and it is where the whole flavour of the dish comes from.
Gravy, in this book"Gravy" here (No. 404) is not pan drippings but one of Ranhofer's stock-based brown preparations. A good unsalted brown stock, reduced for depth, is the honest substitute; commercial stock is usually too salty to reduce this far.
CepesCepes are porcini, Boletus edulis. Two ounces fresh, minced and sautéed in butter first, or roughly a quarter of an ounce dried, soaked and squeezed dry. Add them off the heat, as the recipe directs the pan be taken from the fire at the very first boil.
The croutonsBread cut to the exact diameter of the medallions and only 3/16 inch thick, fried in clarified butter until crisp, then brushed with meat glaze (reduced stock, syrupy and dark) for the shine. They exist to catch juices and give the plate height; cut them before you fry, not after.
Order of workSauce first and held warm, croutons second, meat last. Broiled medallions lose their point within a minute or two of leaving the fire.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's account of some thirty years as chef of Delmonico's in New York, and it reads less like a cookbook than an index of a professional kitchen: nearly every recipe hands off to another by number, on the assumption that stocks, sauces and marinades are already standing in the larder. This is one of a run of nearly identical lamb-medallion preparations — Benoist, Landgrave, Lefort, as venison — that differ only in garnish and sauce, which is how a restaurant with a vast printed carte generated variety without multiplying its underlying labour. The names themselves are the period's habit of dedicating dishes to patrons, colleagues or public figures; who Lefort was is not recorded here. The combination of tomato sauce with a brown gravy, cepes and glazed croutons is straightforwardly French classical practice of the period, transplanted wholesale to Delmonico's.