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Chicken Cutlets

Chicken cutlets made with finely chopped chicken, white sauce, butter, flour, egg, shallot, spices, bread crumbs, fried to golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,019 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Chicken Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Chop the chicken finely.

  2. In a pan, fry the shallot and flour in the butter without browning.

  3. Add the white sauce and bring to a boil.

  4. Stir in the chicken, nutmeg, salt, and pepper, and heat thoroughly.

  5. Add the egg and cook for a few more minutes.

Shape and fry

  1. Cool the mixture until firm, then shape into cutlets.

  2. Dip the cutlets in egg and coat with bread crumbs.

  3. Fry in deep fat until golden brown.

  4. Drain well and arrange on a dish, garnishing with fried parsley.

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. Shallot + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Flour + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 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

Cold chicken
Provides the main protein and bulk of the filling.
White sauce
Binds the chicken into a moist, cohesive mixture.
Egg
Thickens the mixture when cooked and helps the crumbs adhere.
Flour
Thickens the butter and shallot base, giving the white sauce body.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the shallot and flour base.
Bread crumbs
Forms a crisp, golden coating during deep frying.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture until firm before shaping. A warm, soft filling is too loose to hold its shape. Chilling lets the starch and egg set, so the cutlets keep their form and do not break apart in the hot fat.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, sauce, butter, flour, egg, shallot, pepper. 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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