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Chicken Cutlets, French

Coated chicken cutlets fried and served with vegetable purée and white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and white pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,695 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

Chicken Cutlets, French

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Joint and skin the cooked chicken.

  2. Season the bread crumbs with grated Parmesan cheese.

  3. Sprinkle the chicken with cayenne, ground mace or nutmeg, and white pepper.

Coat and fry

  1. Cover the chicken with beaten egg and some of the seasoned crumbs.

  2. Repeat the egg and crumb coating after half an hour.

  3. Fry the chicken until brown and sprinkle with grated cheese.

Serve

  1. Serve the chicken around a purée of sorrel or spinach.

  2. Accompany with white sauce made from chicken bones and flavored with cheese.

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. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  2. Pepper + sorreltop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together419 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Chicken + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

  5. Parmesan cheese + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,322 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that holds the seasoned crust to the chicken.
Egg
Binds the crumbs to the chicken and helps the coating set and brown during frying.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savory, salty flavor to the crumb coating and browns slightly on the surface.

The step that matters

Repeating the egg and crumb coating. The second coat of egg and crumbs must be applied after the first has had time to set, otherwise it can slide off in the hot fat and leave bare patches that brown unevenly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, bread, parmesan cheese, pepper, white pepper, egg, sorrel):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, bread, parmesan cheese, pepper, white pepper, egg, sorrel. 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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