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Breaded Veal Cutlets

Breaded veal cutlets simmered in butter, bacon fat, and liquid, then thickened with flour and garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Breaded Veal Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Trim off extra fat from the veal cutlets and wipe them with a damp cheese cloth.

  2. Cut the veal into serving pieces and sprinkle with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  3. Dip the cutlets in breadcrumbs, then in a mixture of beaten egg and water, and coat with breadcrumbs again.

Cook and serve

  1. In a skillet, heat half butter and half bacon fat and brown the cutlets.

  2. Cover the browned cutlets with boiling water and simmer slowly for 1 hour.

  3. Thicken the liquid with flour, using 1 tablespoon of flour for every 1 cup of liquid.

  4. Serve the cutlets on a hot platter and garnish with parsley.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 cutlets
The main protein, which becomes tender during slow simmering.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns in the hot fat.
Egg
Binds the breadcrumb coating so it adheres to the cutlets.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the coating brown in the skillet.
Bacon fat
Adds savory flavor and high-heat browning to the coating.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce.

The step that matters

Brown the coated cutlets before simmering. Browning in hot fat develops color and flavor through the Maillard reaction, and the crust needs to set before the cutlets are covered with liquid, otherwise the coating can soften and wash off.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Sagefits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, egg, butter, flour. 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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