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To Fry Cold Veal

Fried veal cutlets coated in egg yolk, bread crumbs, herbs, lemon peel, and nutmeg, served with a butter gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Fry Cold Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Cut the cold veal into pieces about ¼ inch thick and as long as desired.

  2. Dip the pieces in the yolk of eggs, then coat them with bread crumbs mixed with sweet herbs and shredded lemon peel.

  3. Grate a little nutmeg over the coated veal.

Fry the veal

  1. Heat fresh butter in a pan until hot enough for frying.

  2. Fry the veal pieces in the hot butter until golden brown.

  3. Remove the fried veal with a fork and place it in a dish near the fire.

Make the gravy

  1. Shake flour into the pan.

  2. Make gravy from the veal bone.

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 + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

Cold veal
Lean meat that becomes tender and juicy when cut thin and fried quickly.
Yolk of eggs
Binds the bread crumb coating so it sticks to the veal pieces.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that protects the meat during frying.
Butter
Conducts heat for frying and adds browning and rich flavor.
Flour
Thickens the pan juices to make the gravy.

The step that matters

Frying the veal in butter until golden brown. Butter browns quickly and can burn before the thin coated pieces are cooked through. Heating it until hot, not smoking, and frying in batches keeps the coating golden and the veal tender.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Coconutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, egg, bread, nutmeg, 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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