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Wiener Schnitzel

Thin veal cutlets coated in egg and breadcrumbs, fried in butter and lard, served with anchovy, capers, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Wiener Schnitzel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Cut thin slices from a tender leg of veal, thinner than ordinary veal cutlets.

  2. Pound the slices with a few short, sharp strokes and reshape them.

Bread and fry

  1. Dip each slice in beaten egg.

  2. Coat each slice with bread crumbs, pepper, and salt.

  3. Fry the slices quickly in a mixture of hot butter and lard until firm and golden brown.

Plate and serve

  1. Place each slice on a hot dish.

  2. Top each slice with a rolled boneless anchovy and surround with capers.

  3. Garnish each slice with lemon quarters.

  4. Serve immediately.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Capers + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Pepper + caperstop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,088 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Forms the tender, thin cutlet that the coating and frying are built around.
Egg
Binds the bread crumbs to the veal so the coating adheres during frying.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust that protects the meat while it cooks.
Butter
Adds rich flavour and helps the crust brown during frying.
Lard
Raises the frying fat's heat tolerance and contributes to a crisp, browned crust.

The step that matters

Fry the slices quickly in hot fat. Fat must be hot enough to set the crumb crust and brown it fast. If the fat is too cool, the coating absorbs oil and turns greasy while the thin veal overcooks and dries.

Swap the capers

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Capersthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, egg, bread, pepper, butter, lemon. 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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