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Mutton Soubise

Mutton cutlets served with a sauce of onions, carrots, turnips, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mutton Soubise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Soak the onions overnight.

  2. Boil the onions until tender.

  3. Cut the carrots and turnips into small dice and boil them as well.

  4. Chop the onions very finely.

Make the sauce

  1. Place them in a saucepan.

  2. Mix in the flour gradually.

  3. Add the milk.

  4. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  5. Stir in the butter, season with pepper and salt, and boil for two minutes.

Serve

  1. Arrange the cutlets on a dish with the vegetables in the center.

  2. Pour the sauce around.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton cutlets
Form the main body of the dish, providing the meat that the vegetables and sauce accompany.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, and their fine chopping lets them blend into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as it is mixed in gradually.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens when heated with the flour.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy finish to the sauce.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body as diced vegetables served with the cutlets.

The step that matters

Mixing in the flour gradually. Adding flour slowly while mixing into the milk prevents lumps. Flour needs to be dispersed evenly before heating so that starch can thicken the liquid smoothly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, turnip, carrot, butter, flour, milk, pepper. 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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