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Veal Mignons, Sauce Bordelaise
Procure a two-pound piece from the round of a tender, white veal, then cut it in six equal mignons, neatly flatten and trim them, season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper. Heat a tablespoon melted butter in a frying pan, add the mignons one beside another, and gently fry for five minutes on each side. Remove. Prepare six round toasts, a quarter-inch thick and two inches in diameter, place on a hot dish, arrange the mignons over the toasts, pour Bordelaise sauce over all and serve.
A hotel-kitchen assembly of three parts: the veal, the toast rounds, and a sauce the book expects you to have already made. The only real risk is overcooking lean veal in a hot pan.
- The cut"Round" here means the leg, so top round or the eye of round. Ask for a two-pound piece cut into six medallions of even thickness, and trim the silverskin or they will curl.
- Five minutes a side is too longFive minutes a side may be too long -- Thin flattened medallions cook fast; go by feel and by an internal 145F over medium-high heat, then rest a few minutes. Veal from the round has almost no fat and turns dry and grey quickly.
- Butter alone will burnOne tablespoon is not much for six pieces. Add a spoonful of neutral oil to raise the smoke point, or clarify the butter. The browned fond left in the pan is worth deglazing into the sauce.
- BordelaiseThe book carries this as its own entry: dry red wine reduced with shallots, thyme and bay, let down with brown sauce or demi-glace, and classically finished with poached beef marrow and a knob of butter. A good store-bought demi-glace base is the practical shortcut; the marrow is optional but is the point of the sauce.
- The toastsThese are croûtes, meant as a base to catch the sauce. Cut 2-inch rounds a quarter-inch thick from a firm white loaf; frying them in butter rather than toasting dry will help them hold up under the sauce, though the recipe simply says toasts.
- SeasoningA teaspoon of salt and half a teaspoon of pepper season the two pounds of meat, not each mignon. Season just before the meat goes into the pan.
- Yield and serviceSix mignons on six toasts; the recipe gives no portion count. Everything must land hot — warm the platter, and hold the sauce at a bare simmer while the veal rests.
Alexander Filippini spent decades in the kitchens of Delmonico's in New York, and this recipe carries the marks of that trade: a French sauce, a French garnish, and a dish named in the borrowed vocabulary of the grand restaurant. Mignon simply means small and neat, and the word, most familiar from the beef fillet, was by this period also applied to other small trimmed rounds of meat. Sauce bordelaise takes its name from Bordeaux and its character from the region's red wine, reduced with shallots and enriched with brown sauce; the poached beef marrow that traditionally finishes it is what separates a bordelaise from an ordinary red-wine reduction. The recipe's call for "tender, white veal" reflects a period preference for pale veal.