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Veal Cutlets En Papilottes

Veal cutlets wrapped in bacon and herbs, baked in parchment paper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Veal Cutlets En Papilottes

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the veal

  1. Remove the bones from the veal cutlets and season with pepper and salt.

  2. Fry the cutlets in 1 ounce of butter for 10 minutes until cooked, then let them cool.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine 2 ounces of flour, ½ cup of stock, 1 ounce of butter, a few drops of lemon juice, and season with pepper and salt. Boil the sauce until smooth.

Wrap and bake

  1. Butter a piece of white writing paper.

  2. On one half of the paper, place a slice of bacon, then a cutlet, followed by chopped parsley and thyme, and another slice of bacon.

  3. Fold the other half of the paper over the filling and twist it to seal.

  4. Place the wrapped cutlets in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 10 minutes. Turn the wrapped cutlets once.

  5. Serve hot.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal cutlets
Provide the tender meat that is cooked inside the paper parcel.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps the cutlets brown when fried.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour, basting the veal as it cooks.

The step that matters

Boil the sauce until smooth. Flour must be cooked while boiling to lose its raw starchy taste and to thicken fully. Stirring keeps it from lumping, so the sauce comes out smooth.

Swap the thyme

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

  1. Marjoramfits about as well
  2. Thymethe original
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, butter, flour, lemon, parsley. 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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