A French Cutlet is a thin slice of meat from the leg or ribs of mutton, veal, pork or chicken.
The French Cutlet dish is a dish that is made of such slice, often breaded (also known in various languages as a cotoletta, Kotelett, kotlet or kotleta).
This word cutlet in French Cutlet probably came from the French côtelette, which evolved into “cutlet” in English.
In Italian cotoletta refers to a food dipped in egg and bread crumbs and then fried.
The most common kinds of meat chops are pork and lamb.
A thin boneless chop, or one with only the rib bone, may be called a cutlet, though the difference is not always clear.
The term "chop" is not usually used for beef, but a T-bone steak is essentially a loin chop, a rib steak and a rib cutlet.
Pork cutlets are usually lean steaks similar to sirloin chops, but meatier and boneless.
Sometimes medallions cut from a pork tenderloin a cutlet.
Cutlets are classically pounded thinner, to make them even more tender, dredged in breadcrumbs, and pan-fried.
Pounding the cutlet flattens it, which in turn makes it cook more quickly, an advantage since the meat is usually from a tougher section of the animal, and shouldn't be cooked any longer than necessary or else it will turn out chewy and inedible.
In cooking terms, a “cutlet” of meat — chicken, pork, beef, lamb, turkey — refers to a thin cut of meat usually taken from the leg or rib section (with fowl, sometimes the breast) of the animal.
Commonly, cutlets are pounded even thinner before being quickly cooked over high heat.
However, what defines a cutlet is that it's made from a thin slice of meat, not the fact that it's dredged and fried.
Although beef is not one of the meats made into cutlets, beef cube steak, which is used for making chicken-fried steak or Swiss steak, is sometimes referred to as a beef cutlet.