How many breasts does a chicken have?

One? Two? It’s one of the questions I get asked most in my cooking classes when we talk about using chicken breasts in a recipe. To be anatomically correct, chickens have one breast. (Picture a chicken walking around. . . . That front part, where you’d pin a medal or a corsage—that’s the breast.) That breast is divided into two halves by the breastbone. (Picture a supermarket package of “chicken breasts,” bone-in, skin on, boneless, whatever. Each piece is half of a chicken’s breast, though it is commonly called a breast.) Many recipe writers use some variation of the “two separate breast halves” or “one whole breast, unsplit.” In real life (and that’s what I’m opting for too), I think most of us define a chicken breast as half of a chicken’s whole breast. . . . Okay? The French, who have always been more precise in matters of butchery and cuisine, define a chicken breast as having two suprêmes. This way there is no confusion.