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Coquettes of Chicken, Veal or Sweet Bread

Coquettes are fried meat patties coated in breadcrumbs, made with butter, flour, spices, eggs, and meat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Coquettes of Chicken, Veal or Sweet Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Melt the butter in a stew pan.

  2. Add flour, pepper, salt, and nutmeg; mix well.

  3. Chop the meat, but not too fine, and stir it into the mixture.

  4. When cool, add the yolks of two eggs to bind the mixture.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape into oblong pieces, dip in the beaten egg, and roll in bread crumbs or powdered crackers.

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

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

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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

Butter
Enriches the mixture with fat and flavour, helping it hold together while cooking.
Flour
Thickens the butter and meat mixture so it can be shaped into patties.
Chopped meat
Forms the main body of the patties, giving them savoury flavour and substance.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture so the patties hold their shape when fried.
Bread crumbs or powdered crackers
Form a crisp outer coating that browns during frying.

The step that matters

Fry in boiling lard until golden brown. The lard must be hot enough to brown the coating quickly; if it is too cool, the crumbs absorb fat and the patties turn greasy and may fall apart.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, flour, pepper, meat, 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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