Skip to main content
Main

Veal Cutlets

Veal cutlets fried in butter or lard, served with a gravy made from flour, butter, boiling water, salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Veal Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cutlets

  1. Cut the veal into slices about ½ inch thick.

  2. Level the meat with a rolling pin if necessary.

  3. Shape and trim the cutlets.

  4. Brush the cutlets with egg.

  5. Sprinkle the cutlets with bread crumbs mixed with minced herbs, salt, and pepper. Press the crumbs onto the cutlets.

Fry and make the gravy

  1. Fry the cutlets in fresh lard or butter until they are a delicate brown, ensuring they are thoroughly cooked but not dry.

  2. If the cutlets are thick, cover the pan for a few minutes at a distance from the fire to cook through.

  3. Keep the cutlets hot on a dish while making the gravy.

  4. In the same pan, add a little flour and a piece of butter the size of a walnut. Brown the flour and butter mixture.

  5. Pour in boiling water as needed.

  6. Season the gravy with pepper, salt, and a little lemon juice.

Serve

  1. Bring the gravy to a boil and pour over the cutlets.

  2. Garnish with slices of broiled bacon and add force‑meat balls if desired.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Bread + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

Veal
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking to a tender, sliceable texture when fried.
Egg
Acts as a binder so the bread crumbs stick to the cutlets.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned crust when fried in fat.
Flour
Thickens the gravy after it is browned in butter.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the frying and the browned gravy.

The step that matters

Frying the cutlets gently. Frying over too high a heat browns the crumb coating before the veal's center is cooked. Moderate heat, with covering for thick cutlets, lets the meat cook through while staying juicy rather than dry.

“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.

More veal cutlets recipes

Breaded 34Fried 28Broiled 19Cracker-Crusted 8in Cream Sauce 6with Potatoes 6 See all 232 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes