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Cutlets of Fowls, Partridges, or Pigeons.

Pigeon cutlets coated in bread crumbs and fried, served with brown gravy or Espagnole sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Cutlets of Fowls, Partridges, or Pigeons.

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cutlets

  1. Remove the flesh from the breast and wings of the birds, yielding 6 large fillets.

  2. Flatten the strips of flesh under the wings to create at least 9 equal-sized cutlets.

  3. Fry diamond-shaped pieces of bread until pale brown and set aside to dry.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip the cutlets in egg yolks mixed with a little clarified butter.

  2. Coat the cutlets with seasoned bread crumbs.

  3. Melt enough butter to fry the cutlets until light amber in color.

Serve

  1. Arrange the cutlets on the fried bread pieces and pile them high.

  2. Pour a brown gravy or Espagnole sauce around them.

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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Bind the bread crumb coating to the cutlets and help it brown when fried.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that protects the meat while it fries.
Butter
Carries heat for frying and adds richness and a light amber color.
Flour
Thickens the sauce and adds body to the dish.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and meat flavors.

The step that matters

Frying the coated cutlets in butter. Butter browns quickly and can burn before the coating sets. Keeping the heat moderate lets the crumbs turn light amber and the meat cook through evenly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, mushroom, pepper, egg, bread):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Plumfits less well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, mushroom, pepper, egg, bread. 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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