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Egg Cutlet

Egg Cutlet is a fried egg slice coated in breadcrumbs and parsley, served with tomatoes and béchamel sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Egg Cutlet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Boil the eggs for at least 20 minutes.

  2. Shell and cut the eggs into lengthwise slices.

  3. Once cold, dip each slice into beaten egg seasoned with salt and pepper.

Coat and fry

  1. Coat each slice completely with bread crumbs mixed with minced parsley.

  2. Fry the cutlets in hot oil, enough to float them.

Serve

  1. Arrange on a hot dish with slices of grilled or panned tomatoes and serve with béchamel 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Parsley + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Bread + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Form the cutlet body and, once beaten, the coating that binds the crumbs.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned outer crust when fried in oil.
Minced parsley
Adds fresh, herbal aroma to the crumb coating.

The step that matters

Fry in enough hot oil to float the cutlets. Oil deep enough to float the cutlets fries them evenly and quickly, so the crumb coating browns and crisps before the egg inside overheats and toughens.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, pepper, bread, parsley, sauce):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, bread, parsley, sauce. 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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