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Chicken Cutlets

Chicken cutlets coated in bread crumbs and baked with a creamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Chicken Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and add the flour to make a roux.

  2. Gradually stir in the stock and cream, cooking until thickened.

  3. Add the chopped chicken and season with salt and pepper.

  4. Let the mixture cool.

Shape and bake

  1. Form the mixture into cutlets.

  2. Dip each cutlet in the beaten egg, then coat with bread crumbs.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden brown.

  4. Garnish the platter with peas.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Bread + peastop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Thickens the butter and stock into a roux that holds the filling together.
Butter
Forms the roux base and adds richness to the filling.
Stock
Forms the liquid that, thickened, binds the chicken mixture.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the thickened filling.
Egg
Binds the bread crumb coating to the cutlets and helps it brown.
Chicken
Provides the main protein that sets into the cutlet filling.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before forming cutlets. A warm, loose mixture is hard to shape and may slip apart. Cooling lets the thickened roux firm up so the cutlets hold their form through coating and baking.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, cream, egg, chicken, pepper, bread):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Beansfits about as well
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, cream, egg, chicken, pepper, bread. 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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