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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 filling

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Add the flour and stir in the milk, cooking until it leaves the sides of the pan.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, and cayenne, then add the chopped eggs, ham, and mushrooms.

  4. Spread the mixture on a plate to cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape into cutlets, cover with beaten egg, and roll in breadcrumbs.

  2. Fry in hot oil until golden brown.

  3. Drain and serve with a piece of macaroni in each cutlet 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

Flour
Thickens the milk into a stiff white sauce that binds the filling together.
Hard boiled eggs
Provide the main body of the filling and help it hold its shape when cooled.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour as the base for the sauce.
Milk
Hydrates the flour to form a smooth sauce that gives the filling moisture.
Beaten egg
Forms a coating that helps breadcrumbs stick and promotes even browning.

The step that matters

Cook the flour and milk until the mixture leaves the sides of the pan. Cooking the starch long enough thickens the sauce and gives a firm mixture. If it stays thin, the filling will be too soft to shape and may break apart when 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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