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MUTTON CUTLETS (a la Soubise)
Cutlets may be taken from the leg if lean cutlets are preferred, but the neck or loin may be advantageously used, when the chops should be cut two bones thick, but removing one of them and also the chinebone. About four inches is a good length for the cutlet. If cut from the leg, lard with bacon and tongue. (See LARD, TO.) Stew the cutlets in good well-seasoned veal or chicken stock sufficient to cover them, and when done press them between two dishes to flatten, then drain them. In the meantime prepare the Soubise sauce. First peel and blanch eight onions, slice them into a stewpan with more of the stock, and simmer them gently, without allowing them to get colour, until they are nearly dissolved, then add a similar quantity of bechamel sauce, and strain through a fine hair-sieve. Put the cutlets into this puree to warm up, and serve with croustades or more onions, prepared as before, but not crushed. The cutlets may also be served with French beans, or any vegetable without a marked flavour of its own. Time, until tender--about three-quarters of an hour. Probable cost, 10d. to 1s. per pound. Sufficient, two cutlets for each person.
A Victorian braise-and-sauce dish: the cutlets are cooked gently in stock, flattened, then finished in an onion puree. The sauce is the point, and it is easy to get wrong by letting the onions take colour.
- Keep the onions whiteSoubise is a white sauce; the onions are sweated in stock, not browned. Any colour in the pan turns the finished puree beige and gives it a fried-onion flavour that fights the béchamel. Cover the pan, keep the heat low, and stop when they collapse to a pulp.
- Butchery in modern terms"Two bones thick, but removing one" means cutting a double chop from the rack or loin and taking out one rib so the remaining bone carries a thick piece of meat. The chine is the backbone section; a butcher will remove it on request. Rack of lamb is the closest modern equivalent, and lamb rather than true mutton is what most shops sell.
- The "similar quantity" of béchamelThe instruction is genuinely vague: it means roughly equal volumes of onion puree and béchamel. Start at half and half and adjust — more béchamel gives a milder, thicker coating sauce, more onion a sweeter, looser one.
- LardingLarding with bacon and tongue means threading strips through the lean meat with a larding needle, standard practice for the dry cut from the leg. If you skip it, bard the cutlets with a wrapping of fat bacon instead, or simply use the neck or loin, which have their own fat.
- SieveA fine hair sieve was a horsehair-mesh drum sieve. A fine nylon or metal sieve does the same job, and a blender before straining will save considerable pushing.
- Pressing the cutletsThe recipe has them pressed between two dishes to flatten once cooked, then drained; a weight on top helps. Press them while still hot, when they flatten most readily, so they reheat evenly in the sauce.
- Reheating in the sauceThe final warming through should be gentle. The meat is already tender after its braise, and hard boiling risks the sauce catching or thinning and the cutlets drying out.
- CroustadesHere these are fried or baked bread cases. The recipe offers them or the extra whole uncrushed onions as the garnish; small toasted bread shells or croutes serve the same purpose.
- Timing and yieldThree-quarters of an hour suits neck or loin chops of that thickness; the leaner leg cutlets will dry out if pushed. Two cutlets for each person, as stated.
Soubise is one of the small group of French sauces that carry an aristocratic surname, generally traced to the household of the eighteenth-century Prince de Soubise, though as with most such attributions the link is traditional rather than documented and the sauce was almost certainly the work of his kitchen rather than the man. In classical practice it is simply onions cooked to a pulp without colour and bound -- with bechamel here, sometimes with rice or a velouté. Its appearance here reflects the late-Victorian appetite for French technique in English households: mutton, one of the most everyday of British meats at 10d. to 1s. a pound, dressed up with a named sauce and served with deliberately bland vegetables so that nothing competes with it.