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Breaded Veal Cutlets

Breaded veal cutlets simmered in butter, bacon fat, and liquid, then thickened 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 excess fat from the veal cutlets and wipe with a damp cheese cloth.

  2. Cut the veal into serving pieces.

  3. Sprinkle the veal pieces with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

Bread and brown

  1. Dip the cutlets in bread crumbs.

  2. Dip the cutlets in a beaten egg mixed with 1 tablespoon of water.

  3. Coat the cutlets again in bread crumbs.

  4. Heat equal parts butter and bacon fat in a skillet.

  5. Brown the cutlets.

Simmer and serve

  1. Cover the browned cutlets with boiling water.

  2. Simmer the cutlets slowly for 1 hour.

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

  4. Serve the cutlets on a hot platter.

  5. Garnish the cutlets 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, 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

Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that protects the meat during browning.
Egg
Binds the bread crumb coating so it adheres to the cutlets.
Butter and bacon fat
Conduct heat for browning and add richness and flavor to the crust.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light sauce.
Veal cutlets
Provide the lean meat that becomes tender during slow simmering.

The step that matters

Simmer the cutlets slowly for 1 hour. A gentle simmer keeps the liquid below a hard boil, so the connective tissue softens gradually and the meat stays tender rather than tough and dry. Boiling vigorously can toughen the proteins and break up the breading.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, pepper, bread, 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, bread, 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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