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CUTLETS (a la Maintenon)
Cutlets were, it is said, first served in this way under the direction of Madame de Maintenon, to tempt the failing appetite of Louis XIV. According to the original recipe they should be dressed en papillote. Cut up and trim the cutlets, removing as much as possible of the fat. Next chop up finely a little raw ham, some button mushrooms, a small piece of shallot, parsley, and a pinch of thyme; add pepper and salt. Take the cutlets and brown them quickly on both sides in a very hot frying-pan slightly greased, and wrap them up two or three at a time in some well-oiled paper with a dessert-spoonful of the chopped mixture and about the same quantity of butter. Cook them in a brisk oven for about ten minutes, and serve them in the paper, the object of which is to keep in and impregnate the cutlets with the flavour. These cutlets are supposed, properly speaking, to be cooked on a grill over a charcoal fire. French cooks mark the paper with a hot iron to resemble the marking of the gridiron.
A straightforward papillote with a duxelles-and-ham stuffing. The only real difficulties are the paper and the oven temperature, neither of which the original spells out.
- What the cutlets areThe recipe does not say. Cotelettes a la Maintenon were usually lamb or mutton cutlets, chops cut from the best end of neck, one rib each; veal cutlets were also used a la Maintenon, but they would need longer than ten minutes.
- "A brisk oven"Read that as 425-450F. The parcel has to inflate and the butter inside has to steam the meat quickly, which will not happen at 350F.
- The paperUse baking parchment, not waxed paper, which melts, and not printed paper. The original calls for well-oiled paper; parchment does the same job without needing to be greased, though a light film of oil still helps the parcel seal.
- The chopped mixtureThis is a rough duxelles: finely chopped button mushrooms, shallot, parsley, thyme, and raw cured ham — prosciutto, serrano or unsmoked gammon all work. "Raw ham" here means cured but uncooked, not fresh pork.
- Sear hard, then stopThe hinge of the dish is the pan stage. The cutlets should colour in about a minute a side in a dry, very hot pan; if they cook through here, the ten minutes in the oven will overshoot and the parcel will fill with grey juice rather than butter and mushroom.
- Two or three to a parcelAs the recipe directs. Fold the parchment in a half-moon and crimp the edge tightly; if the seam opens, the aroma the whole method exists to trap escapes.
- TimingTen minutes suits chops of the thickness above; thicker chops want twelve to fourteen, and the parcels should rest two or three minutes before opening. Aim for pink at the bone.
- YieldAllow two cutlets a head, so this scales as one parcel per diner. Serve the parcels closed and let them be opened at table.
- The hot ironPurely decorative — cooks scored the paper to fake grill marks from the original charcoal method. Skip it; a hot skewer on parchment tends to burn straight through.
Côtelettes à la Maintenon appear across nineteenth-century French and English cookery books, and the attribution to Françoise d'Aubigné, Madame de Maintenon — governess to Louis XIV's illegitimate children and later his morganatic wife — is traditional rather than documented; the tale of tempting the ageing king's failing appetite is the sort of origin story that attaches itself to dishes named for court figures. What is genuinely period is the technique. Cooking en papillote is often said to have begun as a way of protecting delicate meat over a charcoal grill, where the oiled paper shielded it from direct flame while trapping the fat and aromatics; the move indoors to a closed oven, which Cassell's records here as the practical option, changed the paper's job from shield to steam-jacket. French cooks still branded fake gridiron marks onto the paper.