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Wiener Schnitzel

A veal cutlet coated in egg and breadcrumbs, fried and served with anchovies, capers, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Wiener Schnitzel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Cut thin slices from a tender leg of veal, thinner than ordinary veal cutlets.

  2. Pound the slices with a few short, sharp strokes and reshape them.

Bread and fry

  1. Dip each slice in beaten egg, then coat with sifted bread crumbs, pepper, and salt.

  2. Heat a mixture of butter and lard until hot, then fry the slices quickly until firm and golden brown.

Serve

  1. Place the fried schnitzels on a hot dish, top each with a rolled boneless anchovy, and surround with capers.

  2. Garnish with lemon quarters and serve.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Capers + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + caperstop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,088 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Thin, tender slices form the main body of the dish and cook quickly to a tender bite.
Egg
Binds the bread crumb coating to the meat so it adheres during frying.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp golden crust that protects the meat while it fries.
Butter and lard
Fat conducts heat for quick frying, promoting browning and a golden crust.

The step that matters

Fry the slices quickly in hot fat. Fat must be hot enough to brown the crumb coating fast. If it is too cool, the coating absorbs oil and turns greasy, and the thin veal overcooks and toughens before the crust sets.

Swap the capers

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, egg, bread, pepper, butter, lemon):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Capersthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, egg, bread, pepper, butter, lemon. 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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