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Chicken Cutlets

A fried croquette made from a mixture of chopped chicken, ham or tongue, mushrooms, truffle, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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

Make the filling

  1. Melt butter in a skillet over medium heat.

  2. Add flour and cook without browning.

  3. Stir in chicken stock and cook until thickened.

  4. Mix in the chicken, ham or tongue, cream, lemon juice, mushrooms, and truffle.

  5. Season with salt and pepper, then transfer to a plate to cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into cork-shaped croquettes.

  2. Coat each croquette with beaten egg and breadcrumbs.

  3. Fry in hot oil until lightly browned.

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. Mushroom + truffletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Truffle + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the roux and carries flavour into the filling.
All-purpose flour
Forms a roux with the butter that thickens the stock into a binding base.
Chicken stock
Liquid that cooks with the roux to form a thick, savoury béchamel-style base.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and a smooth, soft texture to the filling.
Eggs
Coat the croquettes so the breadcrumbs adhere and form a crisp shell.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden outer crust when fried.

The step that matters

Cook the flour without browning. Flour cooked gently in butter forms a smooth roux that thickens evenly. If it browns, it adds colour and a toasted flavour and weakens its thickening power, so the filling may stay loose and hard to shape.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, ham, mushroom, truffle, butter, flour, cream):

  1. Coconutfits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Grapefits about as well
  4. Avocadofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, ham, mushroom, truffle, butter, flour, 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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