Skip to main content
Main

Plain Veal Cutlets

A veal cutlet coated in egg and bread crumbs, fried, served with a wine gravy and garnished with lemon and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Plain Veal Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cutlets

  1. Cut the cutlets from a leg or lean piece of veal.

  2. Trim and flatten the cutlets.

  3. Dip the cutlets into the beaten egg.

  4. Coat the cutlets with the grated bread mixed with parsley, pepper, salt, and mace.

Fry and make the gravy

  1. Fry the cutlets in butter until golden brown.

  2. Use the meat trimmings to make a well-seasoned gravy.

  3. Thicken the gravy with flour.

  4. Add white wine to the gravy.

  5. Brown 1 tablespoon of butter with 2 tablespoons of flour in a pan.

  6. Add ½ cup of boiling water, pepper, salt, and white wine to the pan.

  7. Boil the mixture for a few minutes.

Serve

  1. Pour the gravy into a dish.

  2. Place the cutlets on top of the gravy.

  3. Garnish with cut lemon and parsley.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  5. Parsley + macetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,268 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean veal cutlets
Provide the tender meat that is the main body of the dish.
Beaten egg
Binds the grated bread coating so it adheres to the cutlets.
Grated bread
Forms a crisp, golden coating when fried in butter.
Butter
Fries the coating to browning and adds rich flavor.
Flour (in the method)
Browns with butter and thickens the gravy.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the gravy.

The step that matters

Fry the cutlets in butter until golden brown. The egg and bread coating browns through Maillard reactions at the surface, which needs steady heat. Too little heat leaves the coating pale and greasy, while too much burns it before the veal cooks through.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, egg, bread, parsley, pepper, butter, white wine. 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.

More veal cutlets recipes

Breaded 34Fried 28Broiled 19Cracker-Crusted 8in Cream Sauce 6with Potatoes 6 See all 232 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes