Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Cutlets

Chicken cutlets coated in seasoned breadcrumbs, fried, and served with a savory gravy of butter, shallots, carrots, herbs, and peppercorns.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,523 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Chicken Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cutlets

  1. Cut the chicken into cutlets.

  2. Fry bread crumbs in clarified butter until pale brown.

  3. Dip the cutlets in clarified butter mixed with the egg yolk.

  4. Cover the cutlets with seasoned bread crumbs mixed with lemon peel, mace, salt, and cayenne.

  5. Fry the cutlets for about 5 minutes until golden brown.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and add shallots, carrots, herbs, mace, and peppercorns; fry for 10 minutes.

  2. Pour in the gravy made from chicken bones and simmer for 20 minutes.

  3. Strain the sauce.

Serve

  1. Place each cutlet on a crouton and stack them on a serving dish.

  2. Pour the sauce over the cutlets before serving.

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. Lemon + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  3. Shallot + carrottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together803 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + carrottop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Bread + shallottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,245 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Forms the body of the cutlets and carries the main flavour of the dish.
Egg yolk
Helps the coating adhere and sets to bind the crumbs to the meat.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned coating when fried in butter.
Clarified butter
Fat for frying that browns the crumbs and cutlets without burning as readily as whole butter.
Gravy
Provides moisture and savoury body to the sauce served over the cutlets.

The step that matters

Frying the cutlets to golden brown. Frying at the right heat browns the crumb coating through Maillard browning while the chicken warms through. Too hot and the crumbs burn before the centre heats; too cool and the coating turns greasy and soggy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, butter, egg, bread, lemon, shallot, carrot):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, egg, bread, lemon, shallot, carrot. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesChicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipes