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Plain Veal Cutlets

Veal cutlets served with a butter‑flour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Plain Veal Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Take a slice of veal from the best end of a leg, about ¾ inch thick.

  2. Beat the veal with a rolling pin, then shape and trim it to the size of a wine glass.

  3. Coat the cutlets well with flour.

Cook and make the gravy

  1. Fry the cutlets over medium heat for about 15 minutes until light brown and cooked through.

  2. Keep the cutlets warm on a hot dish while making the gravy.

  3. Pour off excess fat from the pan and melt 2 tablespoons of butter.

  4. Add 1 tablespoon of flour to the melted butter and stir until colored.

  5. Gradually pour in 1 cup of gravy (or boiling water), adding salt, pepper, and lemon juice to taste.

  6. Boil the gravy well and pour it over the cutlets.

  7. Garnish with bacon or forcemeat balls if desired.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  4. Veal + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,580 recipes

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

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking to a tender, lightly browned cutlet.
Flour
Coats the cutlets for browning and thickens the butter into the gravy base.
Butter
Adds fat for frying and richness to the gravy.

The step that matters

Stir the flour into the butter until colored. Cooking flour in melted butter toasts it and removes raw starch taste, and stirring keeps it from clumping. Adding liquid only after the roux is smooth and evenly colored gives a glossy, lump-free gravy.

“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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