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Veal Cutlets a l’eSPAGNOLE, or with Brown Sauce

Veal cutlets served with a brown sauce made from consommé, brown sauce, mushrooms, butter, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Veal Cutlets a l’eSPAGNOLE, or with Brown Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Cut a knuckle out of a leg of veal and slice it into a dozen or more thin slices.

  2. Beat the slices and trim them into round shapes.

Brown the cutlets

  1. In a cutlet pan, add clarified butter and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.

  2. Ten minutes before serving, set the pan over high heat to brown the cutlets.

  3. Once browned, arrange the cutlets neatly on a serving dish.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Pour out the fat from the pan and add consommé and brown sauce.

  2. Boil the mixture, then strain it into a small saucepan.

  3. Add mushrooms and return to heat until smooth and slightly thickened.

  4. Stir in a small piece of butter and a little lemon juice.

  5. Just before serving, pour the sauce over the cutlets.

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 + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Veal + mushroomtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,446 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Mushroom + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

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

Leg of veal
Provides the lean meat that is sliced and beaten into thin cutlets.
Clarified butter
Fat for browning the cutlets, adding richness and a golden crust.
Consommé
Liquid base of the sauce, adding savoury meat flavour.
Brown sauce
Thickens and deepens the sauce with a rich, savoury body.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and a little moisture to the sauce.
Butter
Finishes the sauce, adding gloss and a smoother, rounder texture.

The step that matters

Browning the cutlets over high heat. Thin cutlets brown quickly, and high heat in hot fat creates a golden crust through the Maillard reaction. Overcooking dries the thin meat, so timing before serving matters.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Plumfits less well
  4. Grapefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, sauce, mushroom. 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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