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Mignons of Veal with Glazed Chestnuts
Procure six round pieces of tender veal of four to five ounces each from round, neatly flatten and trim, season all over with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper. Heat two tablespoons melted butter in a sautoire, add the pieces of veal one beside another, and gently cook for six minutes on each side.
Prepare six round toasts two inches in diameter and a third of an inch thick, place on a hot dish, arrange mignons over crown-like, and dress the glazed chestnuts (as hereunder) in centre pyramid-like. Skim fat off surface of gravy, then add four finely chopped shallots, brown for two minutes, pour in a half gill white wine, add teaspoon finely chopped parsley and let reduce to almost a glaze. Pour in a gill demiglace, mix well at bottom of pan, boil for five minutes, then pour over mignons and serve.
A Delmonico's-style veal course that depends on two things the original assumes you already have on hand: a proper demi-glace and a pan of glazed chestnuts. Neither is in the paragraph, so read ahead before you start.
- The hinge: have the sauce base readyA gill of demi-glace is the backbone of the dish and the recipe expects it to exist already. Use a good reduced brown veal or beef stock (about 1/2 cup, reduced until it coats a spoon); a stock cube dissolved in water will taste thin and salty against the wine and shallots.
- Gills and sautoiresA gill is 4 fluid ounces, so half a gill of white wine is 1/4 cup and a gill of demi-glace is 1/2 cup. A sautoire is a straight-sided sauté pan wide enough to hold all six medallions without touching.
- The cut"From round" means the leg. Ask for veal top round cut into 3/4-inch rounds, then flatten to about 1/2 inch. Six pieces of 4-5 oz makes six servings as a main course with the chestnuts and toast.
- Cooking timeSix minutes a side on trimmed veal this thin will take it well past dry. Sear in the butter and cook 3 to 4 minutes a side, to an internal 145F with a short rest; veal round has almost no fat to forgive overcooking.
- SeasoningHalf a teaspoon of pepper is a lot for six medallions, though the teaspoon of salt is close to a standard rate for the roughly two pounds of veal involved. Season to taste and correct the finished sauce, bearing in mind the reduced demi-glace to follow.
- Glazed chestnutsThe cross-reference ('as hereunder') points to a chestnut recipe following. Glazing conventionally means peeled cooked chestnuts simmered in stock with butter and a little sugar until the liquid becomes a shining glaze. Vacuum-packed or jarred whole chestnuts work; they are fragile, so roll them in the pan rather than stirring.
- The croutonsTwo-inch rounds a third of an inch thick, cut from a firm white loaf and fried in butter or toasted. Cut them before the veal goes in the pan, and warm the serving dish, or the sauce will chill on contact.
- Building the saucePour off the fat but keep every brown speck in the pan. Sweat the shallots briefly, deglaze with the wine and reduce it to a syrup before the demi-glace goes in, or the finished sauce stays sharp.
The dish belongs to the Franco-American grand-hotel repertoire, and is generally traced to Alexander Filippini, long a chef at Delmonico's in New York, who set down a version in The International Cook Book (1906). Mignon means dainty or delicate, and in kitchen usage it came to denote a small neat round of meat; the construction here — medallions set crown-wise on fried bread, a garnish piled in the centre, a wine-and-demi-glace sauce poured over — is standard restaurant service of the period, when a kitchen kept a stockpot of espagnole reducing all day and any cook could draw a gill of it at a moment's notice. Chestnuts were the autumn and winter garnish of choice in that tradition, cheap, starchy and glossy under a sugar glaze, and they were commonly paired with veal and game. The recipe's brevity is the tell.