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Mutton Cutlets, a LA Maintenon

Mutton cutlets served with a brown sauce of mushrooms, parsley, shallots, nutmeg, and lemon, garnished with fried parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 the grease, then add brown sauce, nutmeg, and lemon juice.

  5. Simmer the mixture for 5 minutes, then cool in the larder.

Pack and warm

  1. Cut oiled paper into heart shapes, one for each cutlet.

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

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

  4. Mark the papers with a heated skewer to give a broiled appearance.

Serve

  1. Serve on a napkin with fried parsley in the center 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 moist when sealed in paper.
Shallots
Add mild onion flavor that softens and sweetens as it cooks in the sauce.
Brown sauce
Supplies rich, savory body and moisture to the cutlets and the dish's sauce.
Mushrooms
Add earthy savory flavor and moisture to the filling.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich meat and sauce.

The step that matters

Frying the cutlets until browned on both sides. Browning creates flavorful Maillard compounds on the meat surface. Cooking too briefly leaves the flavor flat, while overcooking dries the meat before it is sealed in paper and warmed again.

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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