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Mutton Cutlets, a LA Maintenon

Mutton cutlets seasoned and sautéed with mushrooms, parsley, shallots, brown sauce, nutmeg, and lemon, wrapped in paper, baked, and served with fried parsley.

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

Prepare the cutlets

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

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

  3. Brown the cutlets on both sides, then pour off the grease.

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

  5. Cool the cutlets in the larder.

Wrap and bake

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

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

  3. Warm the cutlets in the oven for 15 minutes before serving.

  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 and stays juicy when warmed inside the paper.
Shallots
Add a mild, sweet onion flavour that softens into the sauce as it cooks.
Mushrooms
Add earthy savour and moisture that enriches the sauce around the cutlets.
Brown sauce
Adds body, savoury depth and moisture so the cutlets stay tender when warmed.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances the fat.

The step that matters

Pour off the grease after browning. Excess fat left in the pan would make the sauce greasy and heavy once the cutlets are wrapped and warmed. Draining it keeps the sauce clean and lets the browned flavour carry through.

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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