Cuisine

Austrian

Wiener schnitzel is a pounded veal cutlet in a pale crumb, fried in enough fat to float, and finished with lemon. The coating should puff slightly away from the meat — that is steam, not a failure of adhesion. The crumb is fine; the colour is gold, not brown. Potato salad or a simple potato side is more typical than a sweet sauce. Schnitzel made with pork is common at home and is a different, cheaper plate. The wider Austrian table is Central European: soups, dumplings, cakes, and a coffeehouse pastry line.

Breaded fried cutlets exist across the Adriatic and Central Europe. The Viennese veal version was codified in restaurant and cookbook culture; Italian cotoletta is a cousin, not a settled plagiarism case. Imperial Vienna mixed Bohemian, Hungarian and Alpine cooking into a city menu. Schnitzel as the export is the thin fried cutlet, not Sacher torte. This page will not invent an emperor's cook as the inventor. It will say that the dish is a technique of pounding, crumbing and swimming in fat, and that lemon is the seasoning at the end.

Pound even so the meat cooks in the time the crumb needs. Flour, egg, crumb — in that order, pressed on. Fat should be deep enough that the cutlet floats; a dry smear in a pan will not puff. Drain, lemon, salt. Do not sauce it like a chicken-fried steak. Austrian cooking overlaps German and Italian Alpine food. Wiener schnitzel is the Viennese plate: veal, pale crumb, lemon.