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Veal Cutlets and Chops

Veal cutlets and chops are seasoned, coated, and fried or sautéed, served with butter, lemon, tomato sauce, or spinach.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Veal Cutlets and Chops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Season veal cutlets with salt and pepper.

  2. Dip cutlets in beaten egg, then coat with salted and peppered cracker crumbs.

Cook

  1. Heat deep fat until hissing hot and cook cutlets slowly until done.

  2. Cook slices of ham or salt pork in a frying pan until crisp, then remove.

  3. Add veal to the pan and turn when browned on one side.

Serve

  1. Serve on a hot dish, drizzled with butter and lemon juice, or serve dry with tomato sauce.

  2. Serve spinach with veal if available.

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. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + tomatotop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

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

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Tomato + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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
The main protein, cooked through by slow frying until tender and done.
Beaten egg
Binds the cracker crumbs to the cutlets so the coating stays on during frying.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, browned coating that seasons the outside of the veal.
Salt pork or fat ham
Renders fat into the pan that flavours and helps brown the veal.
Butter
Adds richness and a moist, savoury finish when drizzled over the hot cutlets.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, fried meat.

The step that matters

Heat the deep fat until hissing hot. If the fat is not hot enough, the crumb coating absorbs oil and turns greasy instead of crisping quickly. Starting in very hot fat seals the coating, so the cutlet cooks through without becoming soggy.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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