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Noisettes of Mutton, Norwegienne
Procure six small four-ounce steaks cut from a leg of tender mutton and neatly pare to a round shape. Place them on a plate with one and a half tablespoons oil, a tablespoon vinegar, saltspoon thyme, crushed bay leaf, teaspoon salt and a half teaspoon pepper. Repeatedly turn noisettes in the seasoning, then let infuse for two hours, turning them once in a while. Peel and core four sound apples, place in a saucepan with one ounce butter and two tablespoons sugar, then cook them on a brisk fire fifteen minutes. Press them through a sieve into another saucepan, add one egg yolk and sharply stir while cooking for two minutes. Add a teaspoon freshly grated horseradish, mix well and place in a sauce bowl. Lift up noisettes from seasoning, roll in bread crumbs, arrange on a broiler, broil for four minutes on each side, dress on a hot dish and serve them with the sauce separately.
A marinated cutlet with a hot apple sauce, written in the shorthand of a professional kitchen around 1906. Two things decide whether it works: the sauce must not boil once the yolk goes in, and the crumbed noisettes need a broiler hot enough to colour them before they overcook.
- The yolk is the hingeOnce the egg yolk goes into the sieved apple, the pan must stay below a simmer. Two minutes of sharp stirring over gentle heat thickens it; a boil scrambles the yolk and you get grainy applesauce with no gloss.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. So: 1/4 tsp thyme, and read the crushed bay leaf as one leaf, broken up and picked out before crumbing.
- NoisettesFour-ounce rounds cut from the leg, trimmed of fat and sinew and shaped into a neat disc; the recipe asks only that they be pared round. Any butcher will cut leg steaks; boneless lamb leg steaks are the closest supermarket equivalent, and lamb will be milder and less fatty than the mutton intended here.
- Brisk fireFor the apples this means high heat, uncovered. Fifteen minutes reduces four apples with butter and sugar to a thick pulp; stir often near the end or the sugar catches.
- Broiling the crumbsFour minutes a side suits a fierce direct heat, probably a gridiron over coals or a period gas broiler. Under a modern overhead broiler, preheat fully and set the rack about four inches down; check at three minutes, since dry crumbs on an oiled marinade blacken quickly. Lamb at this thickness is medium-rare at about 130F internal, though 145F is the official recommendation.
- Drain before crumbingThe oil-and-vinegar marinade must be wiped off, not just shaken off, or the crumbs slide away in the heat. Press the crumbs on firmly and let the meat sit a few minutes before it goes under the flame.
- HorseradishFreshly grated root is assumed and is much sharper than the jarred kind, which is already cut with vinegar. If using prepared horseradish, drain it and start with half again as much, tasting as you go, and add it off the heat so the volatiles survive.
- YieldSix noisettes serves six as a plated course, three as a main. The apple sauce makes roughly a cup and a half, which is generous.
Alexander Filippini, for many years associated with Delmonico's as chef and manager, built The International Cook Book (1906) as a tour of national styles filtered through the French professional repertoire, which is why a Norwegian idea arrives dressed in French menu language: noisette for a small trimmed round of meat, à la norvégienne as the label for the garnish that identifies it. What makes the dish Norwegian is the sauce rather than the meat — sweetened apple sharpened with horseradish sits within a broader Northern European habit of serving fruit with mutton, pork and game, and recalls the apple-and-horseradish sauces of Germany and Austria. Sheep meat was an important part of the Norwegian diet, as the salted and dried traditions there attest, and mature sheep were still sold in American markets at this date; true mutton has largely disappeared from English-speaking butchers over the twentieth century, and lamb is the usual modern substitute.