Name: Grilled or Fried Veal Cutlets
Ingredients: 3 lbs veal (best end of the neck or veal cutlet); 1 teaspoon savory thyme (finely chopped); 1 small bunch of parsley (finely chopped); 1 ounce butter; 1 teaspoon lemon juice; 1 egg; Salt and pepper to taste; Bread crumbs; ¾ lb bacon (for rolls)

Why it works: Thyme and parsley 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 ↓

Grilled or Fried Veal Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Place the veal on a cutting board.
Trim the rib bone to 3 inches and remove the chine bone.
Joint each cutlet with a chopper.
Cut each cutlet close to the bone to create extra cutlets.
Beat each cutlet to about ½ inch thick using a meat mallet.
Trim the cutlets, leaving ½ inch of rib bone exposed.
Chop the savory thyme finely until it fills a ¼ teaspoon.
Wash and dry the parsley, then chop it finely.
Melt the butter in the oven, then mix in the lemon juice, thyme, and parsley.

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.

Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,057 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,973 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

Swap the thyme

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

Marjoramfits about as well
Thymethe original
Sagefits about as well
Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, parsley, butter, lemon, egg, pepper, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.