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Spring-Lamb Chops, Soubise
Have six nice spring-lamb chops. Trim and neatly flatten them. Season with a teaspoon salt and two saltspoons white pepper. Lightly roll in flour, then steep in beaten-up eggs and gently roll in bread crumbs. Heat one tablespoon clarified butter in a frying pan; lay the chops in the pan, one beside another, and gently fry for five minutes on each side. Pour the Soubise sauce on a hot dish. Dress the chops nicely over the sauce, one overlaying the other, and serve.
A straightforward breaded chop, but the recipe assumes you already have Soubise sauce standing by and gives no pan temperature. Two details are worth pinning down before you start.
- Soubise sauceThe sauce is the point of the dish and is not given here: it is a thick onion purée, onions blanched and stewed soft in butter without colouring, then bound with béchamel and sieved or blended smooth. Make it first and keep it warm; it should be thick enough to hold the chops rather than run out from under them.
- SaltspoonsA saltspoon is generally reckoned at a quarter teaspoon, so two saltspoons of white pepper is roughly half a teaspoon, a lot for six chops. White pepper was probably preferred so that no dark flecks show against the pale sauce.
- Spring lambUsually meant young, largely milk-fed lamb of about three to five months, killed in spring, with small tender chops. Modern rib or loin chops are larger and from older animals; buy rib chops about three-quarters of an inch thick and expect two or three per person rather than one.
- Clarified butterOne tablespoon will not carry six breaded chops without the crumbs scorching in dry patches. Use three or four tablespoons, enough to film the pan generously. Clarified butter matters here because the milk solids in whole butter blacken at the heat crumbs need.
- The frying timeFive minutes a side over moderate heat suits a thin milk-fed chop. A modern rib chop wants three to four minutes a side and should come off at 130-135F internal for pink; go the full ten minutes and you have grey meat under a good crust.
- Breading orderFlour, egg, crumbs as written, but let the crumbed chops rest ten minutes before frying so the coating sets and stays on in the pan.
- ServingSix chops serve two or three. Pour the sauce onto a warmed platter, not over the chops — the crumb crust is meant to stay crisp, with the sauce underneath.
Sauce Soubise is generally traced to the Prince de Soubise, an eighteenth-century French marshal whose kitchen the name honours, though as with most such attributions the link is traditional rather than documented. By the time this book was compiled the sauce had settled into the classical repertoire as a thick onion purée bound with béchamel and served with lamb and mutton: sweet stewed onion against the fat of the meat, the same logic as English onion sauce with mutton but sieved, enriched and given a French name. Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, wrote for households that wanted hotel dining-room dishes at home, which is why a recipe this brief can assume the reader either knows how to make Soubise or will look it up elsewhere in the book.