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Veal Cutlet

A veal cutlet coated in breadcrumbs and served with a brown sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Veal Cutlet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cutlet

  1. Season the veal cutlet with salt and pepper.

  2. Roll the cutlet in breadcrumbs, dip in beaten egg, and roll in breadcrumbs again.

  3. Melt the fat in a frying pan over medium heat and brown the cutlet.

Make the sauce and finish

  1. In a separate pan, melt the butter, add flour, and stir to make a roux.

  2. Gradually add stock or water, stirring until smooth.

  3. Strain the sauce over the cutlet and cook just below boiling for 1 hour or until tender.

  4. Add Worcestershire sauce and parsley just before serving.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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 cutlet
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender during slow cooking in the sauce.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, browned coating on the outside of the cutlet when fried.
Butter
Melts with flour to form a roux, adding richness and flavour to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as part of the roux, giving it body.
Stock or water
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, carrying flavour and keeping the cutlet moist.

The step that matters

Adding the stock to the roux. Adding liquid gradually while stirring lets the starch in the flour swell evenly, so the sauce becomes smooth instead of lumpy.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Sagefits about as well

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