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Veal Cutlets

Veal cutlets are flattened veal pieces coated in breadcrumbs and fried, then simmered in a sauce of butter, flour, stock, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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

  1. Remove all fat and bones from the veal steak and shape it into round, flat pieces about the size of doughnuts.

  2. Pound the pieces to flatten them.

  3. Skewer the pieces to maintain shape.

  4. Sprinkle the pieces with salt and pepper.

Coat and fry

  1. Roll the cutlets in sifted bread crumbs.

  2. Dip the cutlets in beaten egg.

  3. Coat the cutlets with crumbs again.

  4. Fry the cutlets in pork fat for 15 minutes until golden brown on all sides.

Make the sauce and finish

  1. Melt the butter in a stew pan.

  2. Mix the flour into the melted butter until smooth.

  3. Gradually add the hot water or veal stock.

  4. Add a pinch of pepper.

  5. Add lemon juice (or vinegar or prepared horseradish).

  6. Simmer the cutlets in the sauce for 45 minutes.

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

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Veal + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,930 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Bread + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

Butter and flour 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

Veal steak
Forms the main body of the cutlets, becoming tender when simmered in the sauce.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns during frying.
Pork fat
Conducts heat for frying, helping the coating brown and crisp on all sides.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the sauce base.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter and liquid into a smooth sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the sauce.

The step that matters

Add the hot liquid gradually. Adding the hot water or stock slowly to the flour and butter lets the starch disperse evenly, so the sauce stays smooth instead of lumpy.

“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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