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Veal Cutlets and Tomatoes

Veal cutlets simmered with tomatoes, ham, anchovy paste, lemon juice, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Veal Cutlets and Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown

  1. Dredge the veal pieces with flour.

  2. Melt the butter in a stewpan and add the cutlets.

  3. Brown the cutlets on both sides.

Simmer

  1. Add the diced ham, onion, tomatoes, anchovy paste, lemon juice, and seasonings.

  2. Cover the saucepan and simmer gently for 1 hour and 15 minutes, removing scum as it rises.

  3. Shake the saucepan frequently to prevent burning.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Tomato + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal fillet
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender during slow simmering.
Butter
Adds richness and helps brown the flour-dredged cutlets.
Tomatoes
Provide moisture and acidity that build the sauce.
Flour
Dusts the veal so it browns and slightly thickens the sauce.
Anchovies
Add savory depth that blends into the sauce without tasting fishy.

The step that matters

Simmering gently and shaking the pan. Gentle heat keeps the veal tender and the sauce from reducing too fast, while frequent shaking stops the flour and sugars at the base from scorching.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, flour, butter, ham, tomato, lemon, pepper. 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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