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Egg Cutlets

Egg cutlets are small fried patties made from boiled eggs, milk, flour, butter, parsley, onion juice, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Egg Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Chop the hard boiled eggs finely.

  2. Boil the milk, then add it to the butter and flour that have been thoroughly mixed. Stir constantly until the mixture is very thick.

  3. Remove from heat and mix in the chopped eggs, parsley, onion juice, salt, and pepper.

  4. Set the mixture aside until cold.

Shape and fry

  1. Form the mixture into small cutlets.

  2. Dip each cutlet in egg and then in breadcrumbs.

  3. Fry the cutlets in very hot oil 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Hard boiled eggs
Provide the bulk and body of the filling, holding the cutlet together.
Milk
Cooked with butter and flour to form a thick sauce that binds the filling.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a stiff sauce as it cooks, giving the mixture structure.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the sauce and helps it stay smooth.

The step that matters

Set the mixture aside until cold. A warm, soft mixture will not hold its shape when formed and can fall apart in the oil. Chilling firms the starch-thickened sauce so the cutlets keep their form while frying.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, flour, butter, parsley, pepper. 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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