Skip to main content
Main

Nut Cutlets

A fried cutlet made from chopped nuts, milk, butter, egg, flour, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Nut Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a saucepan, melt 2 tablespoons of butter over medium heat.

  2. Add 2 tablespoons of flour and stir to form a roux.

  3. Gradually add ½ cup of milk, stirring constantly until the sauce thickens and reaches a boil.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten egg, 2 cups of bread crumbs, and chopped nut meats until well combined.

  5. Transfer the mixture to a platter and let it cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Once cooled, cut into squares.

  2. Dip each square in the beaten egg and then coat with bread crumbs.

  3. Fry in deep fat until golden brown.

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

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

Nut meats
Provide the main body and nutty flavor of the cutlets.
Milk
Forms a thick white sauce with the butter and flour that binds the mixture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and starts the roux with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a sauce that helps hold the cutlets together.
Egg
Binds the mixture and, as a dip, helps the crumb coating stick.
Bread crumbs
Add bulk to the mixture and form a golden crisp outer coating when fried.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before cutting. A warm, soft mixture will not hold its shape when cut and dipped. Cooling lets the starch-thickened sauce firm up so the squares keep their form through coating and frying.

“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 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipes