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Veal Collops

Thin veal slices seasoned, coated, and fried in butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Veal Collops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Cut the veal into pieces the size of a large oyster.

  2. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and ground nutmeg or sweet herbs, rubbing the seasoning over each piece.

Coat

  1. Dip the pieces into beaten egg.

  2. Coat with fine bread crumbs or rolled crackers.

Fry

  1. Fry in sweet butter until golden brown.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Nutmeg + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Lean meat forms the main body of the collops, cooked until tender inside a crisp coating.
Beaten egg
Acts as a binder so the bread crumbs or crackers adhere to the veal.
Fine bread crumbs or rolled crackers
Form a crisp coating that browns in the butter when fried.
Sweet butter
Conducts heat for frying and adds richness and browning to the coating.

The step that matters

Fry in sweet butter until golden brown. Butter contains milk solids that brown quickly, so the heat must be moderate to colour the coating without burning it before the veal cooks through.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, egg, bread, butter. 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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