No. 1595

Mutton Cutlets a la Marechale

Cotelettes de Mouton a la Marechale

Prepare and trim some mutton cutlets, as for plain cutlets (No. 1590), season and sauté them quite rare in clarified butter; let cool off under a weight pressed lightly on them, then pare and cover both sides of the cutlets with a thin layer of cooked fine herbs (No. 385); place on top of this another thin layer of chicken quenelle forcemeat (No. 89), bread-crumb them English style and range them on a baking tin; pour clarified butter over and brown in the oven; remove, drain, garnish with paper frills (No. 10). Dress them on a crown-shaped trimmed rice croustade, fill the center with some turned truffles rolled in a little meat glaze (No. 402) and butter and serve separately a half-glaze sauce (No. 413) with essence of truffles (No. 395).

← No. 1594 Mutton Cutlets a la Macedoine Mutton No. 1596 Mutton Cutlets a la Nelson →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with a numbered reference book at hand, so this reads as a sequence of pointers rather than a recipe. The hinge is the chilling step: the cutlets must be cold and firm before they are coated, or the herb paste and forcemeat slide off in the oven.

What à la maréchale meansA cooked item is masked with a savoury paste, then breaded and browned. Here the mutton is cooked first, cooled under a weight to compress and flatten it, then jacketed and reheated — so the final oven stage is about colour and setting the forcemeat, not cooking the meat.
Cooling under a weightPress the sautéed cutlets between two trays with a light weight and chill until firm; the recipe gives no time. The cutlets need to be cold and set before coating, or the layers are liable to slump.
Cooked fine herbs (No. 385)Ranhofer's fines herbes preparation is shallots and mushrooms cooked down in butter with parsley until dry and thick — essentially a stiff duxelles. It must be nearly paste-dry or it will steam the breading loose.
Chicken quenelle forcemeat (No. 89)Raw chicken breast pounded and sieved, bound with panade and cream. A modern food-processor mousseline is the nearest workable substitute rather than an exact equivalent. Spread it thin; a thick layer will not set through before the crumbs burn.
"Bread-crumb them English style"Standard à l'anglaise: flour, beaten egg, fine dry crumbs. Ranhofer means the egg-and-crumb coat, not a batter.
OvenRanhofer only says brown. Around 400F for 12-15 minutes gives colour and cooks the forcemeat layer through; the meat itself was already cooked rare and will come up to medium in the process.
The muttonTrue mutton — sheep generally reckoned at over a year, sometimes over two — is rare in American markets. Lamb rib or loin chops behave the same way but are milder and slightly quicker to sear; trim them French-style, scraping the bone clean, since the paper frill needs a bare bone to sit on.
Garnish and sauceThe rice croustade is a moulded ring of stiffly cooked rice, trimmed and dried; a ring of pilaf pressed into a mould works. Truffles "turned" means cut to olive shapes. Substituting sautéed cremini in the glaze is honest, if not the same dish. The sauce is demi-glace flavoured with truffle essence, served in a boat.
YieldTwo trimmed chops per person as a main course. The recipe gives no quantities; both coatings are specified only as thin layers, so judge by covering rather than by measure.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) records the kitchen of Delmonico's in New York, and this entry shows how that kitchen worked: a numbered cross-reference system in which a single dish draws on six or seven standing preparations kept ready daily. The à la maréchale treatment — cook, cool, mask, crumb, brown — is a classic French method usually applied to sweetbreads, chicken breasts or lamb cutlets, and the name is generally traced to the rank of maréchal rather than to any individual. Mutton occupied far more space in nineteenth-century menus than it does now; American and English flocks were kept as much for wool as for meat, so older, stronger-flavoured carcasses were routine, and a coating of duxelles, forcemeat and crumbs did useful work in tempering a pronounced flavour while making a plain chop into a plated centrepiece.