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Chicken Cutlets

Chicken cutlets made with minced chicken, mushrooms, and a white sauce, 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. Make a white sauce by melting butter, adding flour, and gradually stirring in chicken stock or milk until thickened.

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

Shape and fry

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

  2. Chill the mixture and shape it into cutlets.

  3. Roll the cutlets in breadcrumbs, dip in beaten egg, and roll in breadcrumbs again.

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

  5. 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and bind the chicken mixture so it holds its shape.
Flour
Thickens the butter and stock into a white sauce that holds the chicken together.
Butter
Fat that enriches the white sauce and carries flavor into the mixture.
Cooked chicken
Main protein that gives the cutlets their body and savoury flavor.
Mushrooms
Add moisture and earthy flavor to the chicken mixture.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolks off the heat, then cook briefly. Egg yolks thicken when heated, but if the sauce is too hot when they go in they can scramble and turn grainy. Removing the pan from heat first, then cooking gently for about a minute, lets them thicken the sauce smoothly.

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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