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Pork Cutlets a LA Sauce Robert

Pork cutlets cooked with onions, ham, peppercorns, and a sauce of consommé, plain sauce, mustard, vinegar, and oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Pork Cutlets a LA Sauce Robert

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Cut the cutlets from the neck of pork.

  2. In a stewpan, combine sliced onions, lean ham, peppercorns, coarse sea salt, garlic, bay leaf, and butter.

  3. Cook over gentle heat until browned.

  4. Add a small ladle of consommé and boil for a few minutes.

  5. Stir in 2 or 3 spoonfuls of plain sauce and boil until thickened, but not too thick.

  6. Remove from heat and mix in mustard, vinegar, and a little oil.

  7. Rub the sauce through a fine sieve and set aside to cool.

Cook and serve

  1. Broil the cutlets over moderate heat.

  2. Once cooked, rub the cutlets with butter and serve with good gravy.

  3. If desired, warm the sauce gently without boiling before serving.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Garlic + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pork cutlets
Provide the meat that is broiled and served with the sauce.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and gives the cooked cutlets a glossy, rich finish.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that balances the richness of the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and cuts through its richness.
Onions
Form the aromatic base that builds flavour as they brown in the pan.

The step that matters

Boil the sauce until thickened, but not too thick. Over-reducing concentrates salt and sets the sauce stiff once cooled, while under-reducing leaves it thin and watery. Stopping at the right point gives a smooth sauce that coats the cutlets.

Swap the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, onion, ham, butter, sauce, mustard, vinegar):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Garlicthe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, onion, ham, butter, sauce, mustard, vinegar. 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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