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Drop Collops

Drop Collops is veal fried in lard with a cream gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Drop Collops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. In a bowl, combine the chopped veal, black pepper, coarse sea salt, and ground mace.

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

Fry and make the gravy

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into boiling lard, the size of an oyster, and fry until light brown.

  2. In a separate pan, make a gravy by thickening cream with the egg yolk, then season with ground nutmeg and grated lemon peel.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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 and gives them a meaty, firm bite.
Eggs
Bind the seasoned meat together so the spoonfuls hold their shape in the hot lard.
Cream
Thickened with egg yolk to form a smooth, rich gravy that adds moisture.
Egg yolk
Thickens the cream into a gravy through gentle heat and gives it richness.
Lard
Frying fat that browns the outside of the collops and adds savory flavor.

The step that matters

Thickening the cream with egg yolk. Egg yolk thickens cream only when heated gently and stirred; too much heat can curdle it into a grainy sauce instead of a smooth gravy.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, egg, cream, nutmeg, lemon. 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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