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Chicken Cutlets

Chicken cutlets are boneless pieces of chicken coated in egg and breadcrumbs, fried, served with a gravy made from the bones.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Chicken Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Skin the chickens.

  2. Cut the chickens into joints, removing bones from the breasts, thighs, and wings.

  3. Mix salt, mace, nutmeg, and cayenne together.

  4. Flatten and shape the boned chicken joints.

  5. Rub the seasoning over the joints.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip the seasoned chicken into the beaten egg.

  2. Coat with bread crumbs.

  3. Fry the cutlets gently in fresh butter until golden brown.

Make the gravy

  1. In a pot, boil the bones and trimmings in water with lemon peel, salt, and white peppercorns to make gravy.

  2. Strain the gravy and remove fat.

  3. Thicken the gravy with butter and flour in the pan.

  4. Add mushroom powder and lemon juice or pickle to the gravy before serving.

Serve

  1. Serve the cutlets piled high on a dish with the sauce underneath or in a tureen.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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

Chicken
Forms the meat of the cutlets, providing the main structure and protein.
Beaten egg
Acts as a binder so the bread crumbs adhere to the chicken.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned coating when fried in butter.
Butter
Fat for frying that browns the coating and adds rich flavour.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as it cooks with the butter.

The step that matters

Fry the cutlets gently in butter. Gentle heat lets the chicken cook through while the bread crumb coating turns golden brown. Too much heat browns the outside before the inside is cooked.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, mace, nutmeg, egg, bread, butter, flour):

  1. Raisinfits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, mace, nutmeg, egg, bread, butter, flour. 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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