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Venison Collops

Venison collops simmered in gravy, port, and catsup with bread crumbs and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and white wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,765 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity. The science ↓

Venison Collops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown

  1. Season the venison cutlets well with mixed spices.

  2. Brown the cutlets in a stew-pan with butter.

Make the sauce and stew

  1. Add the brown gravy, port or claret, mushroom catsup, walnut catsup, and soy sauce if desired.

  2. Stir in the fried bread crumbs and white wine vinegar.

  3. Stew slowly until the collops are cooked through.

Serve

  1. Place the collops in a dish and strain the sauce over them.

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. Mushroom + white winetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Venison cutlets
Lean meat that becomes tender when browned and then stewed slowly in liquid.
Butter
Fat that helps brown the cutlets, adding colour and savoury flavour.
Brown gravy
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, carrying flavour and moisture through the stew.
Port or claret
Adds wine depth and sweetness to the sauce as it reduces.
Fried bread crumbs
Stirred into the sauce to thicken it and give it body.
White wine vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savoury sauce.

The step that matters

Stew slowly until the collops are cooked through. Gentle, slow heat keeps the thin venison tender and stops the proteins tightening and toughening. Rapid boiling makes lean meat dry and chewy.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, butter, mushroom, sauce, bread, coffee, white wine):

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Peasfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, butter, mushroom, sauce, bread, coffee, white wine. 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.

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