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Chicken Cutlets

Chicken cutlets made from chicken legs, simmered, sliced, breaded, and fried, served with béchamel and vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Chicken Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Remove the thigh bones from the chicken legs, leaving the drumsticks intact.

  2. Place the legs in a saucepan, cover with stock or water, and add the turnip, carrot, parsley, celery, onion, pepper, and salt.

  3. Simmer gently until tender.

Shape and coat

  1. Remove the legs and press between two dishes until cold and firm, then trim into cutlet shapes.

  2. Brush with oil or butter, dip in egg, and coat with bread crumbs twice.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in hot butter or lard until browned, turning two or three times for even cooking.

  2. Arrange on a hot dish, pour béchamel around, and garnish with dressed vegetables in the center.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Legs of fowls
Provide the meat that is cooked, pressed and shaped into cutlets.
Egg
Binds the bread crumbs to the surface so the coating adheres during frying.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns when fried.
Oil or butter
Carries heat and encourages browning of the coated cutlets.

The step that matters

Pressing the cooked legs until cold and firm. The meat must be fully chilled and compressed so it holds its cutlet shape. If it is warm or loose, it will crumble or slip apart when coated and fried.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, carrot, parsley, celery, clove, pepper, butter):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, carrot, parsley, celery, clove, pepper, butter. 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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