Skip to main content
Main

Veal Collops

Veal collops are veal slices rolled with bacon and forcemeat, breaded and fried, served with a lemon‑flavored sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Veal Collops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rolls

  1. Cut the veal into long, thin slices and flatten them.

  2. Place a slice of bacon on each piece of veal.

  3. Spread forcemeat over the bacon and sprinkle with cayenne.

  4. Roll each piece tightly, ensuring they are no longer than 2 inches.

  5. Skewer each roll firmly, then dip in egg and coat with bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in butter until golden brown, turning occasionally.

  2. In the same pan, melt a small piece of butter, add flour, water, lemon juice, salt, pepper, and mace.

  3. Bring the sauce to a boil and pour it over the collops before serving.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Veal
Forms the main body of each roll and becomes tender when cooked through.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour that bastes the lean veal as it cooks.
Egg
Acts as a binder so the bread crumbs adhere to the rolls.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden browned coating when fried in butter.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich veal and sauce.

The step that matters

Rolling and skewering the collops. Rolls that are loose or not skewered firmly can unwind or open during frying, exposing the filling and letting it fall out. Tight rolling keeps the forcemeat inside and helps the coating brown evenly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, pepper, egg, bread, lemon, butter):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, egg, bread, lemon, butter. 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.

More veal collops recipes

Scotch 8 See all 47 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes