Cotoletta alla milanese is Milan's defining veal dish: a bone-in veal rib chop, pounded thin, breaded in egg and breadcrumb, and deep-fried in clarified butter to a golden crust.

The cotoletta alla milanese is first recorded in 1134 in a Sant'Ambrogio cathedral banquet manuscript as lumbolos cum panicio, and codified in modern form by Felice Luraschi in 1829. The famed Austro-Hungarian Wiener Schnitzel theory (Marshal Radetzky took the recipe to Vienna in 1857) is now contested; the Milanese version uses bone-in veal, the Viennese boneless. The bone-in 'orecchio di elefante' shape (the elephant ear) is the modern canonical form, pounded thin and the size of the plate. Trattoria Masuelli San Marco, Da Giacomo and Trattoria della Trebbia serve canonical versions; Cracco's modern version uses high-temperature clarified butter at the precise drop point.

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