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Fried Collops

Fried veal collops served with a tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and garlic are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,076 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Fried Collops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the collops

  1. Season the chopped veal with salt and pepper.

  2. Beat the eggs well and mix them with the seasoned meat.

Fry the collops

  1. Heat lard in a pan until very hot, then drop spoonfuls of the mixture into the lard.

  2. Fry until brown, then remove and drain on paper towels.

Make the tomato sauce

  1. For the tomato sauce, cook the tomatoes with pepper, salt, and garlic for 30 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture through a sieve.

  3. In a separate pan, melt the butter, add the flour, and cook for 1 minute.

  4. Stir in the strained tomatoes, bring to a boil, and serve with the fried collops.

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. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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 the collops, giving them a meaty, firm texture when cooked.
Eggs
Bind the chopped veal together so the spoonfuls hold their shape in the hot fat.
Tomatoes
Provide the base of the sauce, adding acidity and a fresh, sharp flavour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked briefly with butter before the tomatoes are added.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the sauce and helps form the flour roux.

The step that matters

Heat the lard until very hot before frying. Hot fat sears the outside of the spoonfuls quickly, so they brown and hold their shape instead of soaking up grease and falling apart.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, pepper, egg, tomato, garlic, butter, flour):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, egg, tomato, garlic, butter, flour. 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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