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Mutton Cutlets, a LA Maintenon

Mutton cutlets seasoned, sautéed, simmered in brown sauce and lemon, wrapped in paper, served with fried parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Mutton Cutlets, a LA Maintenon

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the cutlets

  1. Season the mutton cutlets with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  2. Add chopped mushrooms, parsley, and shallots to the cutlets.

  3. Fry the cutlets until browned on both sides, then drain excess grease.

  4. Add brown sauce, nutmeg, and lemon juice; simmer for 5 minutes.

  5. Cool the cutlets in the refrigerator.

Wrap and bake

  1. Cut note paper into heart shapes and oil them.

  2. Place a cutlet and some sauce on each paper, then twist the edges tightly.

  3. Before serving, warm the cutlets in the oven at 350°F (175°C).

  4. Mark the papers with a heated skewer to create a rolled appearance.

Serve

  1. Serve on a napkin with fried parsley and a side of brown sauce.

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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton cutlets
Form the main body of the dish, browning in the pan and holding moisture when warmed.
Shallots
Add a mild, sweet onion-like flavour that builds into the savoury sauce base.
Mushrooms
Contribute earthy flavour and moisture to the filling mixture.
Brown sauce
Adds savoury depth and moisture, keeping the cutlet juicy inside the paper.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich mutton and brown sauce.

The step that matters

Frying the cutlets until browned on both sides. Browning through the Maillard reaction creates deep savoury flavour on the surface. Draining the excess grease afterwards keeps the cutlets from tasting heavy once wrapped and warmed.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, pepper, mushroom, parsley, shallot, sauce, lemon):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pepper, mushroom, parsley, shallot, sauce, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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