Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Cutlets

Chicken cutlets made with chopped chicken, white sauce, and flour, coated in breadcrumbs and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 chicken mixture

  1. Melt butter in a pan and sauté shallot and flour without browning.

  2. Add white sauce and bring to a boil.

  3. Stir in chopped chicken, nutmeg, salt, and pepper, and cook for 1 hour until hot.

  4. Remove from heat, add egg yolks, and cook for an additional 2–3 minutes.

  5. Let mixture cool until firm, then shape into cutlets.

Coat and fry

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

  2. Fry cutlets in deep fat until golden brown.

  3. Drain cutlets on paper, arrange on a dish, garnish with fried parsley, and serve hot.

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

Flour
Thickens the butter and shallot base so the white sauce holds its shape.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the mixture so it sets firm when cooled.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour to the shallot base and carries the flour.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden outer crust when the cutlets are fried.
Cold chicken
Provides the main filling, and its protein sets as the mixture cools and firms.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool until firm before shaping. The mixture must be cooled fully so the starch and egg yolks set; shaping it warm causes the cutlets to slump and split 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesChicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipes