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MAINTENON CUTLETS (Gouffe's method)
Take some double cutlets, each with two bones, and remove one of the bones from each. Split open without separating at the top. Spread a little D'Uxelles sauce inside, refold them, then broil four minutes on each side. Spread a little D'Uxelles on a dish, lay the cutlets on this, and pour D'Uxelles sauce over. Place in a hot oven for four minutes, and serve. D'Uxelles may be made by frying equal quantities of chopped mushroom, shallot, parsley, and lean ham in butter for five minutes. D'Uxelles sauce is this preparation with good brown sauce stirred into it.
A Gouffé-derived treatment of lamb chops: butterflied, stuffed with duxelles, grilled, then finished in sauce. The whole thing stands or falls on the duxelles being dry and well-cooked before it goes anywhere near the meat.
- The hinge: cook the duxelles downMushrooms and shallots throw a great deal of water. Five minutes in butter is the minimum; keep going over a brisk heat until the mixture no longer weeps and the pan is dry, or the moisture will steam the inside of the chop and leak out onto the grill.
- "Double cutlets"A rack chop cut two ribs thick, one bone then removed so you get a single-boned chop of double thickness. The recipe does not name the meat; lamb or mutton is the usual reading for cutlets of this kind. Ask a butcher for a rack and cut it yourself, or buy thick-cut rib chops around 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 inches. Trim the exposed bone clean if you want the classic look.
- "Split open without separating at the top"Butterfly it: cut horizontally through the meat from the outer edge in toward the bone, leaving the top attached so it opens like a book and folds shut again. Press the edges together after filling; a short skewer or a loop of kitchen string will hold it.
- Broil means grill over direct heatIn period usage broiling is cooking on a gridiron over coals rather than under an overhead element. A ridged grill pan or a charcoal grill is the nearest thing. Four minutes a side on a butterflied chop gives a pink centre; check with a thermometer if you prefer, and take the meat off before the finishing stage rather than after.
- "Hot oven"Around 425-450F. It is only there four minutes to glaze the sauce and warm the dish through, so preheat properly and use a metal or heavy earthenware serving dish that can take the heat.
- "Good brown sauce"Espagnole in Gouffé's kitchen, a day's work with browned bones and roux. A reduced lamb or veal stock finished with a little butter, or a good demi-glace, does the job. Add it a spoonful at a time; the sauce should coat, not flood.
- The hamThe recipe asks only for lean ham; use a well-flavoured, finely chopped lean ham rather than watery deli slices. It is there for salt and savour, so season the duxelles lightly until you have tasted it with the ham in.
- YieldOne double cutlet per person as a course, two for a main. A rack of eight ribs gives four.
Dishes styled à la Maintenon are traditionally named for Françoise d'Aubigné, Marquise de Maintenon, the second wife of Louis XIV, though the association is culinary legend rather than anything she is documented to have cooked; the classic version wraps the cutlets in a buttered paper case with onion soubise. Duxelles itself is generally traced to the household of the Marquis d'Uxelles, whose cook was François Pierre de La Varenne, author of Le Cuisinier François (1651), and the mushroom-and-shallot mince is said to take its name from him. Jules Gouffé, a pupil of Carême and author of Le Livre de Cuisine (1867), was the great codifier of the French professional kitchen for the generation before Escoffier, and Cassell's borrowed from him and credited him by name — a sign of how thoroughly French practice had colonised the English cookery book.