Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓
Veal Cutlets
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the cutlets
Dredge the cutlets with coarse sea salt and black pepper.
Dip the cutlets in fine cracker crumbs, then in beaten egg, and again in the crumbs.
Cook and serve
Sauté in hot fat from salt pork or beef drippings until browned on both sides.
Place on a hot platter and serve with tomato sauce, Bernaise sauce, or gravy.
Make the gravy
Add 1 tablespoon flour to the fat.
Stir in 1 cup stock.
Season with salt, pepper, and lemon juice.
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.
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Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together27,047 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Veal + porktop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,930 recipes
Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together13,933 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
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Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together15,338 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Eggs
- Beaten egg helps the cracker crumbs adhere to the cutlets as a coating.
- Fine cracker crumbs
- Form a crisp, browned coating when sautéed in hot fat.
- Flour
- Thickens the pan fat and stock into a gravy.
- Stock
- Liquid that becomes the body of the gravy.
The step that matters
Sautéing the coated cutlets. The fat must be hot enough to brown the crumb coating quickly. If it is too cool, the crumbs absorb fat and turn greasy rather than crisp, and the veal can dry out while it waits to brown.
“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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