Why it works: Bread and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Veal Cutlets
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the veal
Cut the veal cutlets to a uniform thickness.
Rub the cutlets with coarse sea salt and black pepper.
Dip the cutlets in sifted cracker or bread crumbs, then in a beaten egg seasoned with salt, and finally in bread crumbs again.
Fry and make the gravy
Heat lard in a skillet and fry the cutlets, turning to brown both sides.
For the cream gravy, pour off most of the grease from the skillet.
Add 1 tablespoon of flour, stirring carefully to prevent lumps. Mix the flour with a little milk if desired.
Add ½ pint of cream or milk and boil for 1 minute until the flour is cooked.
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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Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together20,964 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Veal + breadtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together3,056 recipes
Shared aroma: cis-3-hexenol (green, grassy).
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Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together50,459 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
- Veal cutlets
- Forms the main body of the dish, cooked through and browned in the fat.
- Cracker or bread crumbs
- Form a crisp, browned coating that protects the meat while it fries.
- Egg
- Binds the crumbs to the veal so the coating stays on during frying.
- Flour
- Thickens the pan drippings and cream into a smooth gravy.
- Cream or milk
- Adds moisture and richness, turning the gravy creamy.
The step that matters
Adding the flour to the grease. Stirring the flour in carefully while the fat is still hot keeps it from clumping. Boiling the mixture afterward cooks out the raw flour taste and lets the starch thicken the gravy.
“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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