Sesame-Coated Sautéed Chicken Breasts

Here is a classic recipe from Pierre Franey’s “60-Minute Gourmet,” one that happens not to take quite that long to cook at all. Sesame was a novel ingredient for him, he wrote in 1981, introduced to him by the cooking of “the late Virginia Lee, one of the finest Chinese chefs I have ever met. She used a lot of sesame oil and sesame paste in her flavorings, both in main courses and sauces such as that which accompanies a Mongolian hot pot.” Mr. Franey used sesame seeds as a coating quite a bit after that — on fish fillets, for example — and here adapted the idea to a main course, using whole, skinned, boned chicken breasts. “The dish turned out admirably in texture and flavor,” he wrote. Even better, “it is certainly easy to make, involving nothing more than coating the breast halves with the seeds and sauteing them briefly on both sides in butter. There is a final touch, a light ‘sauce’ made of hazelnut butter to which a dash of lemon juice is added.” (By that, Mr. Franey meant butter that is browned until it is hazelnut in color.)