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Veal Trifles

Breaded veal pieces fried in lard or butter after being coated in a stiff batter of bread crumbs, egg, spices, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Veal Trifles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Purchase a fresh veal soup bone and place it in a pot with enough water to cover it.

  2. Cook until tender, then strain the liquid and refrigerate the meat until morning.

Bread and fry

  1. In the morning, mix bread crumbs, egg, cayenne, black pepper, salt, butter, onion, flour, and enough milk to form a stiff batter.

  2. Roll the veal pieces in the batter and fry in lard or butter until light brown.

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

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 soup bone
Provides the tender meat that is cooked, then breaded and fried.
Bread crumbs
Form the crisp, golden coating around the veal.
Egg
Binds the batter so it adheres to the veal pieces.
Flour
Thickens the batter so it clings to the meat.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the coating brown as it fries.

The step that matters

Frying until light brown. The batter must be coated well and fried at a steady heat so the crumbs brown and crisp without burning. Frying too hot can scorch the coating before the meat is heated through.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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