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Mutton Cutlets, a LA Maintenon

Mutton cutlets served with brown sauce, garnished with fried parsley, wrapped in paper hearts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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.

  4. Pour off excess grease, then add brown sauce, nutmeg, and lemon juice.

  5. Simmer for 5 minutes, then cool in the refrigerator.

Wrap and bake

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

  2. Place a cutlet with sauce in each paper and twist the edges tightly.

  3. Before serving, warm the cutlets in the oven at 350°F (175°C) for 15 minutes.

  4. Mark the papers with a heated skewer to resemble broiled cutlets.

Serve

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

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
Provide the main meat, which browns during frying and stays tender when simmered in sauce.
Shallots
Add a mild, savoury aromatic base that softens and sweetens during frying.
Mushrooms
Add moisture and earthy savoury flavour to the filling as they cook down.
Brown sauce
Adds body, moisture and rich savoury flavour to the cutlets during simmering.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich meat and sauce.

The step that matters

Cooling the cutlets before wrapping. Cooling in the refrigerator lets the sauce thicken so it stays inside the paper rather than running out. Wrapping hot cutlets would make the paper soggy and the sauce leak during the final warming.

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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