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Scotch Collops

A savory pie of veal slices, bacon, hard‑boiled egg yolks, herbs, and optional pickled mushrooms, oysters, and lemon, finished with mutton gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Scotch Collops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut the fillet of veal into thin slices.

  2. Season the slices with pepper, cloves, mace, nutmeg, and coarse sea salt.

  3. Chop the onion and lay it in the bottom of a pie dish.

  4. Layer the veal slices, bacon, and yolks of hard-boiled eggs in the dish.

  5. Sprinkle savory, sweet marjoram, and parsley between each layer of meat.

Bake and finish

  1. Add a little water to the bottom of the pie and dot with butter.

  2. Optionally, add pickled mushrooms, oysters, and sliced lemon.

  3. Bake the pie until done, then remove the lid and skim off the fat.

  4. Pour in mutton gravy thickened with butter.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + marjoramtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Forms the main meat body of the pie, providing savoury flavour and substance when baked.
Bacon
Renders fat during baking, adding richness and savoury flavour to the meat layers.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add a rich, creamy texture and enrich the savoury filling.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps thicken the gravy.
Mutton gravy
Provides moisture and savoury body that fills the pie as it bakes.
Oysters
Contribute a briny, savoury flavour to the filling.

The step that matters

Skim off the fat after baking. Fat rendered from the veal and bacon pools on the surface. Removing it before adding the gravy keeps the finished filling from tasting greasy and lets the gravy set cleanly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, pepper, clove, mace, nutmeg, egg, marjoram):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, clove, mace, nutmeg, egg, marjoram. 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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