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Veal Cutlets From the Fillet or Leg

Veal cutlets coated in bread crumbs and fried, served in a curry‑wine gravy with lemon garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Veal Cutlets From the Fillet or Leg

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cutlets

  1. Remove the bone from the veal flank and cut into ½ inch thick slices.

  2. Beat the egg yolks until light.

  3. Mix the grated bread with pepper, salt, nutmeg, and parsley.

  4. Lightly beat the veal slices and wash one side with egg.

  5. Cover the egg side with the bread mixture, pressing it on with a knife.

  6. Let the cutlets stand to dry slightly.

  7. Turn the cutlets gently and repeat the egg and bread crumb process on the other side.

Fry and stew

  1. Heat boiling lard in a pan and fry the cutlets until light brown.

  2. Prepare gravy by seasoning with curry powder, wine, and lemon pickle.

  3. Thicken the gravy with butter and brown flour.

  4. Drain excess lard from the cutlets and place them in the gravy.

  5. Stew the cutlets in the gravy for 15 to 20 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve garnished with thin lemon slices.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Bind the bread crumbs to the veal so the coating adheres.
Grated bread
Forms a crisp, golden crust around the cutlet when fried.
Curry powder
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor to the gravy.
Butter and brown flour
Thickens the gravy and adds a toasty, rich body.
Lemon pickle
Adds sharp, acidic tang that balances the rich gravy.

The step that matters

Frying the breaded cutlets. Lard must be fully heated before the cutlets go in. Hot fat sets the egg and crumb coating quickly and browns it, while cool fat lets the coating soak up grease and fall off.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, egg, bread, pepper, parsley, wine, lemon):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, egg, bread, pepper, parsley, wine, 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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