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Veal Cutlets, Russian Mode of Cooking

Veal cutlets served with a sauce made from butter, horseradish, shallot, herbs, ham, vinegar, sherry, sugar, and rich white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 376 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Veal Cutlets, Russian Mode of Cooking

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the Russian sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a small saucepan.

  2. Add the grated horseradish, minced shallot, powdered herbs, grated ham, vinegar, sherry, sugar, pepper, and salt.

  3. Cover and simmer gently over low heat until flavors are extracted.

  4. Stir in the rich white sauce and beaten egg yolks, cooking until it thickens, then strain.

Prepare and fry the cutlets

  1. Trim and flatten the veal cutlets, then fry them until light brown, about 12 minutes.

  2. Let the cutlets cool, then spread the Russian sauce on one side.

Bake and serve

  1. Brush with egg and sprinkle with fried bread-crumbs and grated Parmesan.

  2. Place in a buttered baking dish and heat in a brisk oven for a few minutes before serving.

  3. Serve on a hot dish with a little tomato sauce in the center and any cooked vegetables as an accompaniment.

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. Horseradish + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together376 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Horseradish + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Vinegar + sherrytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together660 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  5. Shallot + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the white sauce as they cook and help bind the sauce.
Butter
Carries the aromatics and adds richness to the sauce base.
Horseradish
Supplies a sharp, pungent flavor that cuts the richness of the sauce.
Ham
Adds savory, salty depth to the Russian sauce.
Veal cutlets
Form the main body of the dish, browning when fried.
Parmesan
Adds savory flavor and helps the topping brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolks and cook until thickened. Egg yolks set when heated, but if the sauce gets too hot or cooks too fast, the yolks can scramble and turn grainy. Cooking gently while stirring keeps the sauce smooth and thick.

Swap the horseradish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, shallot, ham, vinegar, sherry, sugar, pepper):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, shallot, ham, vinegar, sherry, sugar, 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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