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Veal Cutlets

Veal cutlets coated in flour, egg, breadcrumbs, fried in lard and butter, then simmered with water until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Veal Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wipe and trim the veal cutlets, cutting them into serving pieces.

  2. Dip each piece first into flour, then into a mixture of beaten egg and water.

  3. Coat with fine dry breadcrumbs.

Cook

  1. Fry in hot lard with a little butter until well browned.

  2. Drain most of the fat, add 1 tablespoon of water, cover, and cook tender over low heat.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Veal + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

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

Veal cutlets
The main protein, which becomes tender through slow covered cooking after browning.
Flour
Dry coating that helps the egg mixture and breadcrumbs adhere to the meat.
Large egg
Binds the breadcrumb coating to the cutlet and helps it brown and crisp.
Fine dry breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, browned outer crust when fried.
Lard
Fat for frying that conducts heat evenly and browns the breadcrumb crust.
Butter
Adds richness and a toasty, browned flavour to the frying fat.

The step that matters

Cook tender over low heat after browning. Browning builds the crust and flavour, but the covered simmer over low heat with a little water is what breaks down the meat's connective tissue; cooking too hard or uncovered can leave it dry and tough.

“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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