Cotoletta alla Milanese is made with a bone-in veal chop, coated first in egg and then in breadcrumbs before being cooked in butter. A classic Milanese recipe with a golden coating and tender veal inside.
Trim away only the excess outer fat and make 2โ3 small cuts around the edge of the meat, without cutting too deeply. This will help prevent the chops from curling during cooking. If the thickness is uneven, use a meat mallet only on the thicker areas, without flattening the chops.
Break the eggs into a dish large enough to hold one chop and beat them with a fork, without adding salt. Place the breadcrumbs in a second dish.
Hold each chop by the bone, dip it into the beaten egg and let the excess drip off for a few seconds. Place it in the breadcrumbs and press gently with your hands so that the coating adheres well on both sides. Keep the bone clean, without covering it in breadcrumbs.
Put the butter in a large, heavy pan and let it melt over low heat, making sure it does not begin to brown before you add the meat. The pan should be large enough for the chops to cook without overlapping.
Place the chops in the butter and cook them for approximately 4โ5 minutes per side. Cooking time may vary depending on the thickness of the chops. Turn them carefully once the coating is golden. As they cook, spoon some of the butter from the pan over the meat, paying particular attention to the area closest to the bone.
The breadcrumb coating should be nicely golden, while the meat should remain slightly moist inside when cut, rather than becoming dry.
Remove the chops from the pan and let them drain briefly on a wire rack or kitchen paper. Season with salt only now, while they are still hot.
Serve immediately with a lemon wedge on the side, allowing everyone to decide whether to squeeze it over the cotoletta.
Servings 4
* Percent Daily Values are based on a 2,000 calorie diet. Your daily value may be higher or lower depending on your calorie needs.
The quantity of breadcrumbs gives you enough room to coat the chops properly; you will not necessarily use all of them.
The same applies to the butter left in the pan. For this reason, the nutritional values are necessarily estimates and will vary according to how much breadcrumb coating adheres to the meat and how much butter is absorbed during cooking.
If your chops are particularly thick, do not increase the heat to speed up the cooking. Give them a little more time instead, keeping an eye on the color of the breadcrumb coating.
Season the cotoletta after cooking. If serving it with lemon, bring the wedges to the table without squeezing them over the breadcrumb coating beforehand.
Mention the origins of Cotoletta alla Milanese and sooner or later the year 1134 appears. A document concerning a meal served to the canons of Sant'Ambrogio contains the expression lombolos cum panitio, later mentioned by Pietro Verri in his Storia di Milano. From those few Latin words came one of the most persistent stories surrounding the dish: that breaded meat was already being eaten in medieval Milan.
Those words, however, are not a recipe. The meaning of cum panitio does not tell us enough to reconstruct the dish with certainty, and identifying it directly with the cotoletta we know today goes further than the document itself allows.
In 1855, Giuseppe Sorbiatti left considerably less to decipher. His Gastronomia Moderna contains โcostoline di vitello fritte alla milaneseโ โ Milanese-style fried veal chops. Here the connection with the modern dish becomes much easier to recognize.
Then there is Radetzky. According to the famous story, Austrian field marshal Josef Radetzky discovered cotoletta while in Lombardy and helped introduce the recipe to Vienna, where it would eventually become associated with Wiener Schnitzel. It is an excellent story: Milan, the Austrian Empire, a field marshal and a recipe crossing the Alps. As historical evidence, though, it is far less convincing. Preparations related to Schnitzel were already documented in Vienna before the recipe was supposedly carried there by Radetzky.
The rivalry has lasted rather better than the story meant to explain it. Cotoletta alla Milanese and Wiener Schnitzel are still constantly compared, even though both have long since become recognizable dishes within their respective culinary traditions.
One date is much easier to pin down: 2008. That was the year the Municipality of Milan officially recognized Cotoletta alla Milanese as a De.Co. (Denominazione Comunale), confirming its place among the dishes associated with Milan's culinary heritage.