When discussing meat dishes, the moment someone learns what a schnitzel is, they usually say, “Okay, so, it’s basically a chicken fried steak, right?” The short answer to that question is yes, essentially, Texas’ iconic chicken fried steak (a flattened, tough cut of steak cooked fried chicken-style) is schnitzel. But that’s not the full answer. Chicken fried steak is probably not exactly the dish a person is talking about if they’re using the word “schnitzel” in the first place. To understand why, you have to understand what a schnitzel is. It also helps to understand the distinctions between it and Wienerschnitzel.
A schnitzel is a meat cutlet, usually breaded and fried. The food world abounds with fried cutlets that are, at their essence, schnitzels. Japanese tonkatsu and torikatsu could be defined as schnitzels, for instance. A Wienerschnitzel, however, is a very specific type of schnitzel. (It is not a hot dog, despite the fast food hot dog chain carrying the name.) It is a breaded, fried veal cutlet. In fact, there is a law in place in Austria that requires any food called Wienerschnitzel (“Vienna schnitzel”) to be made only of veal — not pork, another common schnitzel meat, or beef, as we find in chicken fried steak.
A reasonable assumption may be that the veal-only Wienerschnitzel descended from the more general schnitzel, but the reverse is actually true: The Wienerschnitzel came first; the wider range of schnitzels are variations on that specific dish. And from those schnitzels came the good ol’ chicken fried steak.
Chicken fried steak’s origins involve Wienerschnitzel
A number of accounts set the origin of today’s schnitzel somewhere in Europe in the late 1800s, with Italian General Joseph Radetzy gushing to Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph I about an incredible veal dish eaten in Lombardy. Franz Joseph’s interest was piqued, and Radetzy later ensured the recipe was communicated back to Austria. The Austrians loved it (no big surprise; what’s faster, easier, or tastier than fried meat?), and soon after that, the Germans loved it too…