Wiener Schnitzel

veal beaten thin, floured, egged and crumbed, then fried swimming in fat so the coating puffs away from the meat

Origin: Vienna & Austria

From the journey of Wheat.

A Wiener Schnitzel is veal, and in Austria the word is protected: anything made with pork must be sold as Schnitzel Wiener Art, schnitzel in the Viennese manner. The distinction is legal, is enforced, and is taken seriously by menu-readers. The technique is the dish. The escalope is beaten to about four millimetres, floured, dipped in beaten egg, and pressed lightly into fine breadcrumbs, and it is then fried in a generous depth of hot fat with the pan shaken continuously so that the fat washes over the top. What that produces is a coating that puffs and lifts away from the meat in blisters, so that the finished schnitzel is loose in its crumb rather than sealed in it. A schnitzel whose coating clings flat to the veal has been fried in too little fat and too still a pan, and Viennese cooks will say so. The origin story that will not go away holds that Field Marshal Radetzky brought the dish back from Lombardy in 1857, from the Milanese cotoletta. It is folklore. The claim first appears in print in the twentieth century, breaded veal escalopes are recorded in Viennese cookery books well before Radetzky's return, and the Italian and Austrian versions differ in ways that do not suggest a single act of transmission: the cotoletta is a rib chop cooked in butter, the schnitzel a boneless escalope traditionally fried in lard or clarified butter. The two are relatives with a long shared Habsburg history rather than parent and child. It is served with a lemon wedge and either potato salad or parsley potatoes, and never with a sauce. An anchovy and caper garnish makes it a Schnitzel à la Holstein, which is a German dish and a different one.

Ingredients

Veal

  • 4 veal escalopes from the topside, about 150g each
  • 2 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp white pepper

Coating

  • 120 g plain flour
  • 4 eggs
  • 2 tbsp milk
  • 250 g fine dry white breadcrumbs

To fry

  • 400 g clarified butter or lard

To serve

  • 1 lemon, in wedges
  • 1 handful flat-leaf parsley
  • 800 g potato salad or parsley potatoes

Method

  1. Beat each escalope between two sheets of paper with the flat of a mallet until it is about 4mm thick and evenly so.
  2. Beat outwards from the centre rather than pounding straight down, which tears the meat and leaves thin patches that overcook.
  3. Season the veal on both sides just before coating.
  4. Set out three shallow dishes: flour, the eggs beaten with the milk, and the breadcrumbs.
  5. Turn each escalope in the flour and shake off every trace of excess, then through the egg, letting it drain for a moment.
  6. Lay it in the breadcrumbs and press only very lightly, turning once. The crumb must sit loosely, because a coating pressed hard onto the meat cannot lift away from it in the pan.
  7. Heat the fat in a wide pan to about 170°C. It needs to be deep enough for the schnitzel to float, roughly 1cm, and this is the single thing most home versions get wrong.
  8. Lay one schnitzel in at a time and immediately begin shaking the pan in a steady circular motion so that hot fat washes continuously over the top surface.
  9. Fry for about two minutes, until the underside is deep gold and the coating has blistered and risen, then turn once and give it ninety seconds more.
  10. Lift it out and drain on paper for a moment; do not stack them or cover them, since trapped steam softens the crumb at once.
  11. Fry the parsley sprigs in the fat for a few seconds until crisp.
  12. Serve immediately with a lemon wedge, the fried parsley, and potato salad.

Notes

Enough fat to float the schnitzel, and constant shaking of the pan: those two things together are what make the coating puff. Press the crumbs on lightly. Do not stack, cover, or hold the finished schnitzel. Fine dry breadcrumbs, not panko and not fresh. Clarified butter is traditional and gives the best flavour, and lard is the older fat. Veal is what makes it a Wiener Schnitzel; pork makes a perfectly good dinner under a different name.

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