Skip to main content
Main

Egg Cutlets

Egg Cutlets are fried, breaded halves of boiled eggs seasoned with butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Egg Cutlets

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Boil and prepare eggs

  1. Boil 4 eggs in a deep saucepan with water for 20 minutes.

  2. Pour off hot water.

  3. Cover eggs with cold water.

  4. Peel the eggs.

  5. Cut the eggs in half lengthwise.

Make the coating

  1. Heat a soup plate in hot water.

  2. Add butter, salt, and pepper to the plate, stirring until melted.

  3. Beat the fifth egg in another plate.

  4. Place dry bread crumbs in a third plate.

Bread and fry

  1. Dip each egg half in melted butter.

  2. Dip each egg half in beaten egg.

  3. Roll each egg half in bread crumbs.

  4. Place the egg halves on a platter.

  5. Chill until ready to cook.

  6. Fry the egg halves in hot fat for 1 minute.

  7. Serve with bisque or curry sauce.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Form the main body of the cutlets and set firmly when boiled and fried.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the egg halves and carries the seasoning.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns during frying.

The step that matters

Dip each egg half in melted butter, beaten egg, then bread crumbs. The egg must be fully coated in each layer so the crumbs stick and the coating seals the egg during frying. Chilling the breaded halves before cooking helps the coating hold its shape in hot fat.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes