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Veal Cutlets and Ham

Veal cutlets coated in beaten egg and crackers, fried in lard, served with boiled ham.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Ham

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the slices of ham for 10 minutes, then let them cool.

  2. Cut the ham into strips the same size and shape as the veal cutlets, about 3 inches long and 1.5 inches wide.

  3. Season the veal with salt and pepper, then sprinkle each cutlet with a pinch of lemon peel.

  4. Dip each cutlet in the beaten egg, then roll in the crushed crackers.

Cook and serve

  1. Fry the cutlets in dripping or lard until golden brown.

  2. In another pan, fry the ham in its own fat.

  3. Serve the ham alternately with the cutlets on a hot dish.

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. Veal + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,264 recipes

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

  3. Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 recipes

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

  4. Veal + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,580 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Lemon and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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
Forms the main body of the dish and cooks to a tender, juicy interior under the coating.
Ham
Adds salty, savoury flavour and fat that complements the mild veal.
Raw egg
Acts as a binder so the cracker crumbs adhere to the cutlets.
Rolled crackers
Form a crisp, browned coating when fried.

The step that matters

Fry the cutlets until golden brown. Frying in hot dripping or lard browns the cracker coating through the Maillard reaction, creating crispness and flavour. Too low a heat lets the coating absorb fat and turn greasy before it browns.

“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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