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Veal Steak with Tomato Sauce

A veal steak coated in egg and cracker crumbs, fried in lard and butter, served with a tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Veal Steak with Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the steak

  1. Season the veal steak.

  2. Dip the steak in the egg.

  3. Coat the steak with cracker crumbs.

Fry and make the sauce

  1. Fry the steak in hot lard and butter until tender.

  2. In the skillet, mix the flour, then add the tomato juice.

  3. Cook until the sauce thickens.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the steak.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Veal + tomatotop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together709 recipes

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

  5. Butter + tomatotop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

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

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 steak
Is the main protein that becomes tender through frying.
Egg
Helps the cracker crumbs adhere to the steak as a coating.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, browned coating on the outside of the steak.
Lard and butter
Conduct heat for frying and add fat and browning to the steak.
Dry flour
Thickens the pan juices into a sauce when cooked with the liquid.
Tomato juice
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding acidity and flavor.

The step that matters

Cook until the sauce thickens. Flour must be cooked in the liquid long enough for its starch to swell and thicken the sauce; stopping early leaves a thin, starchy taste and weak body.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, egg, butter, flour. 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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