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Egg Cutlets

Egg cutlets made with butter, flour, milk, eggs, ham, mushrooms, breadcrumbs, and seasonings, then fried and served with macaroni and tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Egg Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Add the flour.

  3. Stir in the milk, cooking until it leaves the sides of the pan.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, and cayenne.

  5. Add the chopped eggs, ham, and mushrooms.

  6. Spread the mixture on a plate to cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into cutlets.

  2. Cover each cutlet with beaten egg.

  3. Roll each cutlet in breadcrumbs.

  4. Fry in hot oil until golden brown.

  5. Drain the cutlets.

Serve

  1. Serve each cutlet with a piece of macaroni and tomato sauce.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  4. Milk + mushroomtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,231 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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

Butter
Enriches the flavour and helps form a smooth base with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a binding paste that holds the cutlet mixture together.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and creates a creamy sauce that moistens the filling.
Hard boiled eggs
Add body and richness to the filling, helping it set firm when cooled.
Beaten egg
Forms a coating that helps the breadcrumbs adhere and browns during frying.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden outer crust when fried.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture fully before shaping. A warm, soft mixture is sticky and loose, so cutlets can fall apart or lose their shape. Cooling lets the starch-thickened base firm up so it holds together when coated and fried.

“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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