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Veal Cutlets

Veal cutlets coated in crushed crackers, fried in lard, served with a cream gravy and parsley garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Veal Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cutlets

  1. Cut the veal into ½ inch thick cutlets.

  2. Mix crushed crackers with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  3. Dip the cutlets in the beaten egg yolk, then coat with the cracker mixture.

Fry and make the gravy

  1. Fry the cutlets in hot lard slowly until cooked through.

  2. For the gravy, pour 1 pint of cream into the pan used for frying.

  3. Add chopped parsley and season with grated nutmeg.

  4. Garnish the dish with curled parsley 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Nutmeg + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Nutmeg and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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
The main protein, cooked through by slow frying in lard.
Crackers
Form a crisp, browned crust that coats the cutlets during frying.
Egg yolk
Acts as a binder, helping the cracker coating stick to the veal.
Cream
Forms the gravy base, adding richness and a smooth, silky texture.

The step that matters

Fry the cutlets slowly in hot lard. Slow frying cooks the thick veal through without scorching the cracker coating before the interior is done. Too much heat burns the crust while the centre stays underdone.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, pepper, nutmeg, egg, cream):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Marjoramfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, nutmeg, egg, cream. 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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