Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Veal Cutlets
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare
Beat the veal cutlets well.
Dip each cutlet in the beaten egg yolk.
Roll the cutlets in bread crumbs.
Fry and serve
Fry in hot lard (400°F / 200°C) until brown.
Garnish with parsley and rolls of thin-sliced fried bacon.
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.
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Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
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Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,588 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
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Veal + breadtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together3,056 recipes
Shared aroma: cis-3-hexenol (green, grassy).
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Veal + parsleytop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together4,766 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
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Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together18,765 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Veal cutlets
- Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender when beaten and cooked through.
- Egg yolk
- Acts as a binder so the bread crumbs adhere to the cutlets.
- Bread crumbs
- Form a crisp, browned coating when fried in hot fat.
- Lard
- Conducts heat for frying and helps the coating brown and crisp.
The step that matters
Fry in hot lard until brown. The fat must be hot enough to brown the crumb coating quickly. If the lard is too cool, the coating absorbs more fat and turns greasy before it crisps, and the veal can overcook while waiting for color.
Swap the parsley
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, egg, bread):
- Nutmegfits about as well
- Parsleythe original
- Capersfits about as well
- Sagefits less well
Fit is the average pairing score against veal, egg, bread. 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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