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Chicken Cutlets

Fried cutlets made from finely chopped cooked chicken mixed with butter, flour, stock, seasonings, beaten egg, and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 ↓

Chicken Cutlets

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Chop the chicken and ham very finely.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan, add the flour, and stir until smooth.

  3. Add the stock and boil until it thickens.

  4. Stir in the salt, pepper, chopped parsley, and cream.

  5. Mix in the chicken and ham well, then turn out onto a plate to cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Once cold, shape into cutlets.

  2. Brush with beaten egg, cover with bread crumbs, and fry in boiling fat.

  3. Serve with fried parsley.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  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. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Flour
Thickens the butter and stock into a smooth, thick sauce that binds the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the sauce, helping it stay smooth and flavourful.
Stock
Liquid that is boiled with the flour and butter to thicken into the binding sauce.
Egg
Brushed on the cutlets so the bread crumbs stick and form a crisp coating.
Bread crumbs
Forms a crunchy, browned outer crust when fried.
Cream
Adds moisture and softness to the filling.

The step that matters

Cool the filling fully before shaping. A warm, soft filling is too loose to hold its shape and can break apart or leak during frying. Cooling lets the thickened sauce set so the cutlets keep their form.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Capersfits about as well

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