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Chicken Chop

A breaded chicken chop coated in a cream and flour sauce, fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Chicken Chop

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken mixture

  1. Finely chop the chicken meat and season with salt and pepper.

  2. Heat the butter in a pan.

  3. Add the flour, cream, and 1 beaten egg.

  4. Season to taste and bring to a boil.

  5. Add the chicken to the mixture.

  6. Remove from heat.

  7. Stir in the lemon juice.

  8. Butter a platter.

Shape and fry

  1. Spread the mixture about 1 inch thick.

  2. Smooth it out with a knife.

  3. Let it cool.

  4. Cut into oval shapes.

  5. Roll in the remaining egg.

  6. Coat with bread crumbs.

  7. Fry in hot lard until golden brown.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  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

Chicken
Provides the main body of the cutlet once finely chopped and bound into a mixture.
Eggs
Bind the chicken mixture and form a coating that helps the crumbs adhere.
Flour
Thickens the cream and butter mixture so it holds its shape when cooled and cut.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the chicken mixture soft and tender.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden browned outer crust when fried.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor to the mixture and helps the cutlet brown.

The step that matters

Let it cool. The mixture must set firmly before cutting and coating. The flour-thickened cream firms as it cools, so cutting it warm makes the shapes soft and likely to break apart in the crumbs and hot fat.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, butter, cream, flour, pepper, egg, bread):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Avocadofits about as well
  4. Figfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, cream, flour, pepper, egg, bread. 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.

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