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Mignons of Lamb, Traviata
Procure six nice, tender mignons of four ounces each from a leg of lamb, neatly trim, lightly flatten evenly, and season all around with a half teaspoon salt and three saltspoons white pepper. Spread a very little French mustard on both sides of each, lightly roll in flour, dip in beaten egg, then slightly turn in finely grated cooked lean ham. Heat a tablespoon melted butter in a frying pan, arrange the mignons in, one beside another, gently fry four minutes on each side and dress on a hot dish. Prepare and dress a tomato crust around the dish. Pour a gill hot demi-glace over the mignons and serve.
A straightforward pan-fried lamb medallion with a ham-and-egg coating, written in the shorthand of a professional kitchen. Two of its measures and one of its garnishes need translating before you start.
- The cut"Mignons" here are small medallions cut from the boned leg; the fuller, leaner muscles of the leg are usually reckoned the tenderest for this. Ask for six 4-oz pieces from a boned leg, or buy a piece of boneless leg and cut them yourself, then flatten them evenly as the recipe directs — the original gives no thickness.
- Saltspoons and gillsA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so three of them are 3/4 teaspoon of white pepper — assertive but correct for the period. A gill is half a cup, which is the right amount of demi-glace for six medallions.
- French mustardIn this period the term points to a smooth prepared mustard in the French style, of which Dijon is the readiest modern stand-in, rather than a sweet or grainy one. A thin film is all that is wanted; it is there to hold the flour and to season, not to dominate.
- The coating is the hingeFinely grated cooked lean ham scorches faster than breadcrumbs. Keep the pan at a steady medium — the ham should toast to a deep russet, not blacken — and do not move the medallions until the crust has set.
- More fat than statedOne tablespoon of butter will not carry an egg-and-ham coating across six pieces. Use two to three tablespoons, or butter with a little neutral oil to raise the smoke point, and fry in two batches so the pan is not crowded.
- Cooking timeFour minutes a side on a medallion of this size will give lamb cooked through with only a faint blush. For medium-rare, three minutes a side is closer; the coating needs enough contact time to brown either way.
- "Tomato crust"The instruction is genuinely terse in the original. It is most easily read as a border rather than pastry: halved tomatoes seasoned and briefly baked or grilled, arranged as a ring around the dish.
- Demi-glaceEspagnole and brown stock reduced together to a glossy sauce. A good store-bought demi-glace concentrate or a well-reduced veal stock stands in; warm it and pour it over at the last moment so the ham crust stays crisp.
- YieldSix 4-oz medallions serve three as a main course, or six as a small plated course in the multi-course style this book assumes.
Naming a dish after an opera was standard practice in the grand restaurant kitchens of the late nineteenth century, and La Traviata, Verdi's 1853 setting of the Dumas story, was among the most reliable references a chef could reach for. Alexander Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, compiled The International Cook Book as a working repertory of exactly this sort of plate: a small, uniform portion of good meat, given a distinguishing coating, set inside a colored garnish, and finished with a spoonful of the house brown sauce. The names in such collections rarely carry any meaning beyond the fashion of the moment — there is no documented connection between the opera and lamb, tomatoes or ham — but they tell you what the dining room expected, which was a menu that read like a program.