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Cutlets a LA Reforme

Cutlets a la Reforme are mutton cutlets coated with ham and breadcrumbs, fried and served with a sauce of vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and truffle are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 1,900 recipes mention both. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the carrot into strips and cook them.

  2. Neatly chop the gherkins, mushrooms, and truffles.

  3. In a stewpan, keep the vegetables warm in a bain-marie.

Cook the cutlets

  1. Trim the cutlets and mix the ham with bread-crumbs, pepper, salt, and egg.

  2. Coat the cutlets with the mixture and fry them in butter until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Arrange the cutlets in a circle on a dish.

  2. Place the vegetable strips in the center of the cutlets and pour Reforme sauce around.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Mushroom + truffletop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Bread + buttertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,145 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Mushroom + buttertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together12,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Ham + breadtop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Truffle + buttertop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Mutton best end
Forms the main body of the cutlet and provides the meat that is cooked and served.
Ham
Adds savoury flavour and is bound into the coating mixture with egg and crumbs.
Egg
Binds the ham and bread-crumb coating so it adheres to the cutlets.
Bread-crumbs
Form a crisp outer coating that browns when the cutlets are fried in butter.
Butter
Conducts heat for frying and encourages golden browning on the coating.

The step that matters

Coat the cutlets and fry in butter until golden brown. The egg and bread-crumb coating must be set firmly before frying so it does not slide off. Frying in butter at a steady heat browns the crumbs through Maillard reactions without burning the butter's milk solids, giving an even golden crust.

Flavor stand-ins for the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, ham, egg, bread, mushroom, truffle, butter):

  1. Asparagusbetter flavor fit
  2. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  3. Potatobetter flavor fit
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, ham, egg, bread, mushroom, truffle, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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