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Mutton Cutlets, a LA Maintenon

Mutton cutlets seasoned with salt, pepper, mushrooms, parsley, shallots, and served with brown sauce, nutmeg, and lemon juice.

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

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 brown on both sides.

  4. Drain excess grease from the cutlets.

  5. Add brown sauce, nutmeg, and lemon juice to the cutlets.

  6. Simmer the cutlets for 5 minutes.

  7. Cool the cutlets in the larder.

Wrap and bake

  1. Cut note-paper into heart shapes for each cutlet.

  2. Place a cutlet and some sauce in each paper.

  3. Fold the paper tightly around the cutlet.

  4. Heat the cutlets in the oven for 15 minutes before serving.

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

Serve

  1. Serve on a napkin with fined 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
Provide the main meat, which browns and becomes tender when simmered in sauce.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and moisture to the filling.
Shallots
Add a mild, sweet onion flavour that mellows during frying.
Brown sauce
Adds moisture and rich savoury flavour that coats the cutlets.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich meat and sauce.

The step that matters

Fry the cutlets until brown on both sides. Browning through the Maillard reaction creates deep savoury flavour and colour. Pale frying produces a flat taste, and the cutlets may then lack the depth expected in the finished dish.

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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