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Chicken Cutlets

Chicken cutlets coated in breadcrumbs and fried, served with a savory sauce of butter, shallots, carrots, herbs, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,523 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Chicken Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the chicken into cutlets and prepare an equal number of sippets in the same shape.

  2. Fry the sippets until pale brown and set them aside.

Coat and fry the cutlets

  1. Dip the cutlets in clarified butter mixed with the egg yolk, then coat with seasoned breadcrumbs mixed with lemon peel, mace, salt, and cayenne.

  2. Fry the cutlets for about 5 minutes until golden.

  3. Place each cutlet on a sippet, stack them on a dish, and set aside.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, melt the butter in a saucepan, add shallots, carrots, herbs, mace, and peppercorns, and fry for 10 minutes.

  2. Pour in the gravy made from chicken bones and simmer gently for 20 minutes, then strain the 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. Lemon + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  3. Bread + shallottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sauce + shallottop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,303 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolk
Binds the butter dip so the breadcrumb coating adheres to the cutlets.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden-brown crust when fried in butter.
Clarified butter
Carries heat evenly and browns the coating without burning like whole butter.
Gravy
Provides the liquid base and savoury body of the sauce.
Shallots
Add a mild, aromatic sweetness that flavours the sauce as they fry.

The step that matters

Frying the cutlets. The coating must be fried at a steady, moderate heat until golden. If the heat is too high the breadcrumbs scorch before the chicken warms through, and if it is too low the coating absorbs oil and turns greasy and soft.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, bread, butter, egg, lemon, sauce, shallot):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, bread, butter, egg, lemon, sauce, shallot. 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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