Name: Veal Cutlets for the Aged
Ingredients: 1 pound veal; 1 teaspoon coarse sea salt; a grain of pepper; a little chopped parsley; 2 ounces lard; egg (for coating); bread crumbs (for coating)

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 for the Aged

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

Cut the veal into eight pieces.
Season with salt, pepper, and chopped parsley.
Using the back of a knife, beat each piece until nearly a pulp.
Shape the pieces into cutlets with a knife.

Coat and fry

Coat each cutlet in egg and then in bread crumbs.
Heat lard in a frying pan until very hot.
Fry the cutlets until they are a nice color.

Serve

Serve plain or with fried bacon and chopped onions for added flavor.

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.

Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Parsley + breadtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,588 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,964 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Veal + breadtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,056 recipes

Shared aroma: cis-3-hexenol (green, grassy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Veal: Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender when beaten thin and fried.
Lard: Fat that conducts heat for frying and gives the coating a rich, browned surface.
Egg: Acts as a binder that helps the bread crumbs adhere to the cutlet.
Bread crumbs: Form a crisp, golden crust when fried in hot fat.

The step that matters

Heat the lard until very hot before frying. Hot fat sears the egg and bread crumb coating quickly, so it crisps and browns instead of soaking up grease. Cooking in fat that is not hot enough leads to a soggy, greasy crust.

“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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Veal Cutlets for the Aged