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MUTTON CUTLETS (a la Maintenon)
Put a heaped table-spoonful of finely-chopped shallot into a pan with an ounce of fresh butter, and simmer them for five minutes. Add two table-spoonfuls of minced mushrooms and the same of chopped parsley, which should be first blanched and dried in a cloth; fry these and the shallot together for another five minutes, without burning them. Season with pepper and salt, and add some highly-flavoured meat-gravy. Have ready-trimmed mutton cutlets of two bones thick, the chinebone sawed off and one of the long ones removed. Split the meat carefully and neatly in two, nearly down to the bone, and insert some of the seasoning previously prepared. Close the edges by folding the under part of the cutlet over the upper, and broil on each side for five minutes, or until the meat is of a nice rich brown. Place the cutlets on a dish, and surround them with the sauce; pour the remainder over, and bake for about four minutes in a hot oven. There are other recipes for cutlets a la Maintenon, but this one may certainly challenge comparison with any other, and it has besides the advantage of greater simplicity of preparation. Probable cost, 1s. per pound. Sufficient, a double cutlet for each person.
A double-thick chop split into a pocket, stuffed with a mushroom-shallot mixture, grilled and then briefly finished in the oven. The hinge is the cut: everything depends on getting a chop thick enough to split without cutting through.
- The cutTwo bones thick with the chine sawed off and one rib removed describes what a butcher today would call a double-cut rack chop, roughly 1.5 inches thick. Ask for a rack of lamb chined and frenched, then cut between every second rib; mutton (sheep over two years) is sold only by specialist butchers, and lamb behaves the same way here with less cooking.
- Splitting the pocketCut horizontally into the meaty eye from the fat side, stopping short of the bone, as the recipe directs. A thin boning knife and a well-chilled chop make this far easier.
- The stuffing is a duxellesShallot softened in butter, then mushrooms and parsley: keep the heat moderate so the shallot goes translucent, not brown. Mushrooms release water, so cook until the pan is dry, or the filling will steam its way out of the cutlet.
- Blanched parsleyA brief dip in boiling water, then squeezed dry in a cloth, as the recipe directs; it helps hold the colour and takes the raw edge off.
- "Highly-flavoured meat-gravy"Probably a well-reduced brown stock with real body rather than a thickened pan gravy. Add only a spoonful or two to the mushroom mixture so it binds; keep the rest, further reduced, as the sauce for the dish.
- BroilingThe original means over coals or under a salamander. A hot grill or a ridged cast-iron pan gets you the same rich brown in about five minutes a side; secure the folded edge with a cocktail stick or a short loop of butcher's twine.
- "A hot oven"425-450F. Four minutes at that heat is only a final glaze for the sauce, so have the oven already up to temperature. Lamb is best pulled at 130-135F internal for medium-rare; older mutton wants a few degrees more.
- Yield and costThe recipe gives a double cutlet per person. The "1s. per pound" is Victorian retail pricing and has no modern equivalent worth converting.
The name honours Françoise d'Aubigné, Marquise de Maintenon, the second wife of Louis XIV. In classical French practice \usually meant a cutlet masked with a thick onion or soubise-based mixture and cooked in a buttered paper case; Cassell's version drops the paper altogether and pushes a mushroom, shallot and parsley mixture into a pocket in the meat instead, which is why the compiler pauses to boast of its "greater simplicity of preparation." That editorial aside is characteristic of the book, which was assembled for middle-class English households working without the brigade of cooks that the original French recipes assumed. The stuffing itself is essentially a duxelles, the mushroom-shallot base generally traced to the kitchens of the Marquis d'Uxelles in the seventeenth century, and mutton rather than lamb was the ordinary British roasting and grilling meat well into the twentieth century.