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Veal Cutlets and Celery Sauce

Veal cutlets simmered in celery sauce and served over mashed potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Veal Cutlets and Celery Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Cut the veal into small cutlets or round fillets.

  2. Season the cutlets with salt and pepper.

Cook and serve

  1. Fry the cutlets slowly in butter for 10 minutes without browning.

  2. Drain the cutlets and place them in the celery sauce.

  3. Stew the cutlets in the sauce for 30 minutes.

  4. Arrange the cutlets on a bed of mashed potatoes.

  5. Pour the sauce over and around the cutlets, garnish to taste, and serve.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Celery + vealtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,336 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

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

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Sauce and butter 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

Veal cutlets
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through slow cooking in the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor while the cutlets fry gently.
Celery sauce
Supplies the moisture and savory flavor that the cutlets stew in.

The step that matters

Fry the cutlets slowly in butter without browning. Gentle heat cooks the veal while keeping it pale and tender. Browning at high heat toughens the surface and changes the flavor the sauce is meant to complement.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Celerythe original

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