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Cutlets in White Fricassee

A dish of cutlets simmered in veal gravy, finished with a white fricassee sauce and garnished with lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Veal and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,446 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cutlets in White Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Braise the cutlets

  1. Cut the meat into proper shapes and place in veal gravy to cover.

  2. Season delicately and simmer until tender, but not long enough to lose shape.

  3. Add fresh button mushrooms and a piece of lemon peel to the dish.

  4. Remove the meat when done.

Make the sauce

  1. Take all fat from the gravy.

  2. Thicken the gravy with the yolks of two beaten eggs.

  3. Poach small balls of forcemeat with minced mushrooms in the gravy just before serving.

Serve

  1. Return the meat to the saucepan to heat.

  2. Place in a dish and garnish with thin slices of lemon.

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. Veal + mushroomtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,446 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Mushroom + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Veal + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Mushroom + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,987 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Lemon and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the gravy into a smooth, rich sauce when gently heated.
Veal gravy
Provides the savoury liquid that cooks the cutlets and forms the white sauce base.
Fresh button mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and a tender texture to the finished dish.
Forcemeat
Adds a soft, delicate texture as small poached balls in the sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with the yolks of two beaten eggs. Egg yolks set when heated, so the gravy must stay below a simmer and be stirred constantly. Boiling curdles the yolks and leaves the sauce grainy instead of smooth and glossy.

“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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