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Venison Collops, Scotch

Venison collops served with a Scotch-style gravy made from venison stock, wine, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Venison Collops, Scotch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gravy

  1. In a saucepan, combine the bones and trimmings with cold stock or water.

  2. Stew gently until the gravy is strong and flavorful, about two hours.

  3. Strain the gravy, thicken it with brown thickening, and remove excess fat.

  4. Season the gravy with coarse sea salt, cayenne pepper, and a pinch of grated nutmeg.

  5. Add lemon juice and claret to the gravy, and optional vinegar or flavored vinegar if desired.

Cook and serve

  1. Trim the venison slices neatly and set aside.

  2. Fry the venison slices in butter until cooked through.

  3. Serve the venison on a plate and pour the gravy over it.

  4. For variety, stir vinegar and sugar into the gravy or dissolve red currant jelly in the gravy 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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Red wine + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together575 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

What each ingredient does

Venison slices
Provide the lean meat that is fried until cooked through and served with gravy.
Bones and trimmings from venison
Release gelatin and meaty flavor into the stock as the gravy stews.
Brown thickening
Thickens the strained gravy so it coats the venison rather than running off.
Claret (red wine)
Adds acidity and depth of flavor to the finished gravy.
Butter
Fat for frying the venison, adding richness and browning the surface.

The step that matters

Fry the venison slices in butter until cooked through. Lean venison dries out and toughens quickly over high heat, so cook the slices gently and only until just cooked through to keep them tender.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, flour, pepper, nutmeg, red wine, butter, vinegar):

  1. Plumfits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Red currantfits about as well
  4. Grapefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, flour, pepper, nutmeg, red wine, butter, vinegar. 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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