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How to Give a Dinner

Fried chicken cutlets coated in flour, eggs, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

How to Give a Dinner

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Prepare the chicken by cutting it into cutlets.

  2. Season the cutlets with salt and pepper.

  3. Dredge each cutlet in flour, then dip in beaten eggs, and coat with breadcrumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat oil in a frying pan over medium heat.

  2. Fry the cutlets until golden brown on both sides, about 4-5 minutes per side.

  3. Drain on paper towels before serving.

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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  3. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Chicken + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Chicken + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,991 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 main body of the cutlets and provides the protein that the coating surrounds.
Flour
Dries the chicken surface so the egg and breadcrumb layers stick evenly.
Eggs
Act as a glue that binds the breadcrumbs to the chicken.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust when fried.

The step that matters

Fry the cutlets until golden brown on both sides. Oil that is hot enough sets the crust quickly, so the breading browns and crisps rather than soaking up oil and turning greasy. Frying too cool or too long makes the coating soggy or dry the meat.

“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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