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Chicken Cutlets

Chicken cutlets coated in egg and breadcrumbs, fried in lard, served with tomato sauce and mushrooms or peas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

Chicken Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Shape the chicken into cutlets, pointed at one end and round at the other.

  2. Press the cutlets with a knife to form the shape.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip the cutlets in egg and coat with bread crumbs.

  2. Fry the cutlets in boiling lard until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Insert a paper ruffle into the pointed end of each cutlet.

  2. Serve the cutlets in a circle, overlapping, with tomato sauce in the center or around mushrooms or peas.

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. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  2. Tomato + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Chicken + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,031 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Bread + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Bread + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Forms the main body of the cutlet and provides the savory filling of the dish.
Egg
Binds the bread crumbs to the chicken so the coating stays attached during frying.
Bread crumbs
Forms a crisp, golden coating that browns when fried.
Boiling lard
Fries the coating quickly, creating a crisp, browned crust and rich flavor.
Tomato sauce
Adds acidity and moisture to contrast with the rich fried coating.

The step that matters

Fry the cutlets in boiling lard until golden brown. The fat must be hot enough to set the egg and crumb coating quickly. If the fat is too cool, the coating absorbs more grease and turns soggy instead of crisp.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, egg, bread, sauce, mushroom):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Tomatothe original
  4. Shallotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, egg, bread, sauce, mushroom. 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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