Vienna · Since the 19th century

Wiener Schnitzel

Name: Wiener Schnitzel
Yield: 4 servings
Cuisine: Vienna
Ingredients: 4 veal cutlets from the leg, 120 g each; 2 eggs; 100 g flour; 150 g fine breadcrumbs; 250 g clarified butter; Salt; 1 lemon; Potato salad with vinegar and broth

A veal cutlet beaten thin, breaded and fried in butter until the coat rises in golden waves. Vienna guards the name by law; everyone else borrows it.

Rich7

Umami5

Fresh3

Spice1

Sweet1

The wine

A Grüner Veltliner from the Wachau or a dry Riesling: acidity cuts the butter, and Austrian wine belongs on the table with an Austrian dish.

The Wiener Schnitzel is Austria’s national dish and one of the most copied plates in the world. The legend that Field Marshal Radetzky brought it from Milan in 1857 is charming and probably false; breaded, fried meat was known in Vienna long before. What the city added was the veal, the clarified butter and the insistence that the coat must “soufflé”, lifting from the meat in a loose golden wave.

Under Austrian law a Wiener Schnitzel must be veal. Pork versions are “Schnitzel Wiener Art”, a distinction that matters at Figlmüller, where the famous oversized version is pork, and at Plachutta, where the veal one is the classic. In Berlin, Borchardt made the schnitzel a political instrument: half of German politics has been photographed over one.

The perfect schnitzel needs a thin cutlet, fine breadcrumbs from stale rolls, plenty of clarified butter and a pan that is hot but not smoking. It is served with a lemon wedge, potato salad dressed with vinegar and a little broth, or a cucumber salad. Anything else is decoration.

The home recipe · Serves 4

Ingredients

4 veal cutlets from the leg, 120 g each
2 eggs
100 g flour
150 g fine breadcrumbs
250 g clarified butter
Salt
1 lemon
Potato salad with vinegar and broth

Method

Beat the cutlets between cling film to 4 mm and season with salt.
Coat in flour, then in beaten egg, then in breadcrumbs without pressing them on.
Heat the clarified butter in a wide pan to around 170 °C; the schnitzel must swim.
Fry for two minutes per side, swirling the pan so the butter washes over the coat and it rises.
Drain on kitchen paper, serve immediately with lemon and potato salad.