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Mutton Cutlets & LA Maintenon

Mutton cutlets coated in breadcrumbs and baked in buttered paper, served with stewed mushrooms or green vegetable ragout.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Mutton Cutlets & LA Maintenon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut and trim the mutton cutlets into small round shapes.

  2. Mix fine-grated breadcrumbs with chopped parsley, herbs, and eschalot.

  3. Brush the cutlets with butter and sprinkle with pepper and salt.

Cook

  1. Fry the cutlets for five minutes, then remove them from the pan.

  2. Dip the cutlets in beaten egg, then cover them with the breadcrumb mixture.

  3. Wrap each cutlet in buttered paper and broil for ten minutes, making sure the paper does not scorch.

Serve

  1. Serve the cutlets in the paper with stewed mushrooms or a ragout of green vegetables.

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

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

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Parsley + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,132 recipes

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

  5. Mutton + mushroomtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together685 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton cutlets
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking to a tender, juicy meat inside.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the cutlets brown and crisp in the pan.
Fine-grated breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that protects the meat while it cooks.
Beaten egg
Acts as a binder that helps the breadcrumbs stick to the cutlets.
Eschalot
Adds a mild onion-like aroma and savoury flavour to the crumb coating.

The step that matters

Wrapping in buttered paper and broiling. Paper that is too exposed to the intense heat of the broiler can scorch and burn. Buttered paper protects the coating while the cutlets cook through, so it must be watched closely.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits less well
  4. Marjoramfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, pepper, egg, mushroom. 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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