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Veal Fillets

Veal fillets coated in breadcrumbs, fried, and served with a lemon cream sauce over mashed potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Veal Fillets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Cut the veal into slices about ½ inch thick, then cut each slice into rounds 2 to 2½ inches in diameter.

  2. Beat the egg and mix in the parsley, thyme, lemon rind, and lemon juice.

  3. Dip each fillet in the egg mixture.

  4. Coat each fillet with breadcrumbs.

Cook and make the sauce

  1. Fry the fillets in hot butter in a sauté pan.

  2. Brown the fillets on both sides, then remove and keep warm.

  3. Add flour to the butter in the pan and fry lightly.

  4. Pour in the stock, stir until it boils.

  5. Add lemon juice, cream, and glaze.

  6. Season to taste and simmer for 2 to 3 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the fillets arranged in a circle on a border of mashed potatoes, with the bacon rolls piled in the center.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Thyme + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Parsley + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Fillet of veal
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked tender by quick frying.
Egg
Binds the parsley and lemon mixture so the breadcrumbs adhere to the veal.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns in the hot butter.
Butter
Conducts heat for browning the fillets and carries flavor into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce when cooked briefly in butter.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Brown the fillets on both sides. Browning in hot butter creates flavor and a crisp crust through the Maillard reaction. Fillets that are crowded or too cool steam instead of browning, so they turn pale and soft.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, egg, lemon, parsley, thyme, 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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