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How to Cook Veal Cutlets

Veal cutlets are seasoned, coated in flour, browned, then steamed in a gravy of drippings and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

How to Cook Veal Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut veal into large, uniform pieces or leave whole as preferred.

  2. Sprinkle cutlets with salt and pepper.

  3. Dip cutlets in beaten egg and dredge with flour.

Brown and braise

  1. Heat several spoonfuls of drippings in a frying pan until very hot.

  2. Add cutlets to the hot fat and cook until browned on both sides.

  3. Remove cutlets and season with salt and pepper.

  4. Add 1 cup of boiling water to the pan and return cutlets to the gravy.

  5. Cover closely and steam on the back of the range for 1.5 hours.

  6. If the gravy is not thick enough, add a small amount of flour before serving.

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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Veal + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,845 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Veal + flourtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,886 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

Eggs
Bind the flour coating so it adheres to the cutlets during frying.
Flour
Forms a coating that browns in the fat and thickens the gravy.
Drippings
Fat that fries the cutlets, adding browning and savory flavor.

The step that matters

Browning the cutlets in very hot drippings. If the fat is not hot enough, the flour coating absorbs grease instead of crisping and browning, leaving a pale, soggy crust. Proper searing creates the browned flavor and helps the coating hold during the long steam.

“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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