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Veal Cutlets, with Sorrel

Veal cutlets simmered in veal gravy, served with a sorrel puree.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Sorrel and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 231 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Veal Cutlets, with Sorrel

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the veal

  1. Trim the veal cutlets and fry them in a little butter until lightly browned on both sides.

  2. Drain the cutlets and place them in a stewpan. Pour over enough veal gravy to cover them and let them simmer gently until cooked through.

  3. If desired, add a glass of light wine to the gravy.

Make the sorrel puree

  1. To prepare the sorrel puree, wash the sorrel in plenty of water and place it in a stewpan with 1 pint of water and a pinch of salt.

  2. Cook the sorrel over the fire for 15 minutes or until tender, then drain the water.

  3. In a separate stewpan, melt 2 ounces of butter and mix in 2 ounces of flour smoothly. Stir over the fire for 3 minutes.

  4. Moisten the mixture with 1 pint of gravy, add the drained sorrel, and season with pepper and salt. Stir over the fire for 20 minutes.

  5. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve, heat the puree, and it will be ready to serve.

Serve

  1. Dish the cutlets in a circle, place the sorrel puree in the center, and serve with the gravy in a tureen.

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. Sorrel + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together231 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sorrel + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together419 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Butter + sorreltop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together652 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
Lean meat that gently softens and absorbs flavour from the gravy as it simmers.
Fresh green sorrel
Provides the bright, sharp acidity and green flavour that defines the puree.
Flour
Combined with butter to form a roux that thickens the puree into a smooth body.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, and browns the cutlets when frying.
Veal gravy
Supplies moisture and savoury depth to both the cutlets and the puree.

The step that matters

Rubbing the puree through a fine sieve. Sorrel breaks down into fibrous strands, and pressing it through a sieve removes them, giving the smooth texture the puree needs.

Swap the sorrel

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Sorrelthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, wine, flour, 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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