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Mignons of Lamb, Sauce Lyonnaise
Procure six mignons of four ounces each, cut from a tender leg of lamb, neatly flatten, season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper. Heat a tablespoon melted butter in frying pan, add the mignons, one beside another, and gently fry for five minutes on each side. Remove, arrange six round, freshly prepared slices of toast on a hot dish, place mignons on top, pour a Lyonnaise sauce over and serve.
A plain sauté of lamb medallions on toast rounds, written for a cook who already had a saucier's repertoire at hand. Two things need attention: the cut, and the cooking time.
- What a mignon is hereNot beef filet mignon but a small round steak cut from the boned leg — roughly the eye of the top round or the thicker part of the sirloin end. Ask for six 4 oz medallions from a boned leg, or bone a half leg and cut them yourself across the grain.
- Flatten, but not far"Neatly flatten" is not an instruction to make scallopine; an even 3/4 in is a reasonable target, though the recipe gives no thickness. Pound gently between plastic wrap with the flat of a mallet; leg muscle is lean and will shred if you drive it thin.
- Ten minutes is too longFive minutes a side on a 4 oz medallion of lean leg gives grey, dry meat. Two to three minutes a side in a hot pan brings a 3/4 in medallion to 130–135F for medium-rare, which is where leg meat is at its best. Rest five minutes before plating.
- More fat than one tablespoonA tablespoon of butter across six medallions in one pan will scorch before the meat colours. Use butter with a little neutral oil to raise the smoke point, and sear in two batches rather than crowding the pan.
- Sauce LyonnaiseThe recipe simply assumes the cook knows the sauce: onions sliced thin and cooked slowly in butter until golden, deglazed with white wine and vinegar, then finished with brown sauce or demi-glace. A modern substitute is well-browned onions moistened with dry white wine, a splash of white wine vinegar, and reduced veal or beef stock, mounted with butter.
- The toastRounds cut with a cutter the same diameter as the medallions, fried in butter or toasted and buttered, and used hot. Their job is to catch the sauce, so put them down at the last moment or they go soft under it.
- Seasoning and yieldA teaspoon of salt and half a teaspoon of pepper across 24 oz of meat is about right by modern measure. Serves six as a course, three as a main plate.
Sauce Lyonnaise is one of the classic derivative sauces of the French repertoire, named for Lyon and for the city's long association with onions — anything "à la lyonnaise" on a nineteenth- or early twentieth-century menu meant onions were involved, whether in potatoes, tripe or a brown sauce.