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Chicken Cutlets

Chicken cutlets made with a white sauce of butter, flour, stock, and eggs, then breaded and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

Chicken Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter, add flour, and gradually stir in stock or milk until thickened.

  2. Remove from heat, stir in beaten egg yolks, and cook for 1 minute.

  3. Add minced chicken and mushrooms to the sauce and mix well.

Shape and coat

  1. Chill the mixture and shape it into cutlets.

  2. Roll the cutlets in breadcrumbs.

  3. Dip the cutlets in beaten egg.

  4. Roll the cutlets in breadcrumbs again.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the cutlets in deep fat until golden brown.

  2. Garnish and serve with Mushroom or Oyster 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. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  2. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked chicken
Forms the bulk of the cutlet and gives it its main meaty flavor and body.
Flour
Thickens the butter and stock into a sauce that binds the chicken and mushrooms together.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and adds a rich, savory flavor.
Egg yolks
Enrich the sauce and help bind the mixture as it cools and firms.
Mushrooms
Add moisture and earthy flavor to the chicken mixture.

The step that matters

Chill the mixture before shaping. The sauce-based mixture is soft when warm. Chilling firms the fat and starch so the cutlets hold their shape and do not fall apart in the breadcrumbs or hot fat.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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