Skip to main content
Main

Egg Cutlets for Summer

Egg cutlets made from boiled eggs, milk, flour, peas, and breadcrumbs, then fried and served with a butter‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Egg Cutlets for Summer

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Cover the eggs with boiling water and simmer for 30 minutes in a covered saucepan.

  2. Heat the milk in a double boiler.

  3. Rub together the butter and flour.

  4. Add the butter-flour mixture to the milk.

  5. Stir until thick and smooth.

  6. Season the mixture with onion juice and parsley.

  7. Shell the eggs, chop them finely, and mix with the sauce.

  8. Transfer to a buttered platter and chill until very cold.

Shape and fry

  1. Flour your hands and molding board.

  2. Take a small amount of the mixture and mold it into small cutlets about 1 inch thick.

  3. Coat the cutlets with egg and then with fine dry bread crumbs.

  4. Fry the cutlets in boiling fat until browned.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, blend 1 tablespoon butter, 1 tablespoon flour, and 1 cup milk or cream until smooth.

  2. Season with salt, white pepper, and stir in cooked green peas.

  3. Pour the sauce around the cutlets, not over them.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + peastop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,885 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the chopped filling together and give the cutlets body and structure.
Milk
Forms the thick white sauce that moistens and holds the filling together.
Flour
Thickens the milk with butter and sets the sauce to a smooth, thick texture.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the sauce and helps it blend smoothly with the flour.
Fine dry bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden browned coating on the outside of the cutlets.
Green peas
Add color and mild sweetness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Chill the mixture until very cold before shaping. Chilling firms the starch-thickened sauce and egg, so the mixture holds its shape when molded and does not break apart or soften in the hot fat.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, milk, parsley, butter, flour, onion, peas):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, parsley, butter, flour, onion, peas. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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 recipesGreen PeasGreen Peas229 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes