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VEAL CUTLETS, FRIED (a la Maintenon)
Cut three or four cutlets from the best end of a neck of veal. Trim them neatly in the usual manner, and fry them in melted butter until they are lightly browned on both sides. Allow them to cool, then cover each one smoothly with good sauce, wrap it in oiled paper, and fold the edges together lightly but securely, that the gravy may not escape. Put the cutlets on an oiled tin into a brisk oven, and allow them to remain until the envelopes are nicely browned; serve very hot. The sauce may be made in the following manner. Fry gently in one ounce of butter, one ounce of lean ham; add one ounce and a half of flour and half a pint of stock, then stir the sauce till it boils. Put in four button mushrooms. Skim away the fat, and when the mixture is very thick and smooth stir in, off the fire, four egg yolks. When cool the sauce is ready for use. Time to simmer the cutlets in the fat, one hour. Probable cost, 1s. to 1s. 2d. per pound.
A rack-of-veal chop, browned, jacketed in a thick egg-enriched sauce and baked in a paper case. The technique is en papillote, and the whole point is that the parcel traps the steam and the sauce.
- The contradictory timingThe body of the recipe says to fry the cutlets only until lightly browned, while the summary line calls for an hour in the fat. Follow the instruction, not the summary: veal cutlets from the neck are thin, and an hour in butter would render them dry and stringy. Brown them, three or four minutes a side, and let the oven finish the job.
- Best end of neckThis is the rack — the same cut sold today as veal rib chops. Three or four chops of about 6 oz each, trimmed of the chine bone and excess fat, serve three or four people.
- Brisk ovenRead this as 425–450F. The parcels want fast heat so the paper colours and the sauce sets before the meat overcooks; ten to fifteen minutes is usually enough once the cutlets are already browned.
- Oiled paperBaking parchment does the job and needs no oiling, though a light brush of oil helps the folds stay shut. Aluminium foil will hold the juices but will not brown, which is the visual effect the recipe is after.
- Half a pint of stockImperial measure: 10 fl oz, or a scant 1 a 1/4 US cups. With 1 a 1/2 oz flour to 1 oz butter this is a deliberately stiff roux the sauce is meant to be thick enough to cling to a cold cutlet without running off.
- The yolksFour yolks are stirred in off the heat into a sauce that has already boiled, then the whole thing is cooled before use. Take the pan well off the burner and beat quickly, or the residual heat will scramble them. The sauce firms considerably as it chills, which is what makes it spreadable.
- Button mushroomsOnly four mushrooms go into half a pint of sauce, so they read more as a token addition than a flavour base; the recipe does not say whether they are left whole. Sliced or finely chopped mushrooms distribute better through a sauce that is going to be spread thinly.
- Cool before wrappingThe instruction to let the cutlets cool is not fussiness. Warm meat will loosen the sauce and it will slide off during wrapping; both meat and sauce should be at room temperature or cooler when the parcels are made.
The name points to Françoise d'Aubigné, Marquise de Maintenon, second wife of Louis XIV, and côtelettes à la Maintenon are traditionally credited to her kitchen, though the attribution is the usual retrospective sort attached to grand French dishes rather than anything documented in her lifetime. What is certain is that by the nineteenth century the term had settled into a fixed technique in the professional repertoire: a cutlet part-cooked, masked with a thick reduction, and finished in a paper case. Veal was a middling-priced meat in late-Victorian Britain — the shilling or so per pound quoted here put it above mutton — and the sauce dressed the cutlets up into something fit for a dinner table.