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Soubise Cutlets

Soubise cutlets are neck chops cooked with butter, flour, onions, milk, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Soubise Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Bake the cutlets

  1. Trim the cutlets and lay them in a tin dish.

  2. Cover with buttered paper and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 15 to 20 minutes, turning once while cooking.

Cook the onions

  1. Peel the onions and place them in cold water.

  2. Bring the water to a boil, then discard the water.

  3. Add the onions back into cold water and continue cooking.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Neck chops
Provide the meat that is baked tender under buttered paper.
Onions
Supply the sweet, savoury base of the soubise sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour in the dish.
Flour
Thickens the butter and onion mixture so the sauce holds together.
Milk
Adds moisture and makes the onion sauce smooth and creamy.

The step that matters

Bring the water to a boil, then discard the water.. Briefly boiling the onions and discarding that water mellows their sharp sulfur compounds, so the sauce tastes sweet rather than harsh.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, milk, pepper, lemon):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, pepper, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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