Skip to main content
Main

Lamb Cutlets À LA Maintenon

Lamb cutlets seasoned with herbs, lemon, and mace, coated in grated bread, and broiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Lamb Cutlets À LA Maintenon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chops

  1. Saw off the chine bone from the loin of lamb.

  2. Cut the loin into chops.

  3. Trim off excess fat from the chops.

  4. Shape the chops nicely.

Make the gravy

  1. Melt a little fresh butter in a stewpan.

  2. Add the chops, shallots, thyme, parsley, pepper, salt, mace, and lemon juice.

  3. Cook while stirring until nearly done.

  4. Remove the chops from the stewpan.

  5. Strain the gravy over the chops.

Coat, wrap and serve

  1. Once nearly cold, coat the chops with grated bread.

  2. Wrap each chop separately in oiled white paper.

  3. Broil over a slow fire until cooked through.

  4. Serve with poivrade sauce in a tureen.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  5. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb loin
Forms the main meat, cut into chops that cook through and hold their shape.
Fresh butter
Melts into the stewpan to fry the chops and carry the flavour of the aromatics.
Shallot
Adds a mild, sweet onion-like aroma that builds the base flavour of the gravy.
Grated bread
Forms a crumb coating that helps the chops brown and protects the surface while broiling.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the gravy and balances the richness of the lamb and butter.

The step that matters

Coat the chops only once nearly cold. Coating while the chops are still hot lets the bread absorb moisture and turn soggy, so the crumb will not crisp under the broiler.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, butter, shallot, thyme, parsley, pepper, lemon):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, butter, shallot, thyme, parsley, pepper, 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes