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White Collops and Cucumbers

Thin slices of meat served with sautéed cucumbers, butter, lemon juice, shallot vinegar, sugar, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

White Collops and Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Gut the collops and flatten them.

  2. Butter a skillet and place the collops in it, covering them until the sauce is ready.

  3. Peel the cucumbers, cut them into quarters, then each quarter into three pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. Place the cucumbers in a saucepan with ½ cup butter, a little pepper, and salt.

  2. Cook over low heat until the cucumbers are tender.

Cook and serve

  1. Cook the collops on the stove for a few minutes, turning them.

  2. Add as much sauce as desired for the collops.

  3. Combine the collops with the cucumbers just before serving.

  4. Squeeze a little lemon juice and a few drops of shallot vinegar over the dish, and sprinkle with a dusting of sugar and chopped parsley.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Cucumber + shallottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together264 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

Collops
Meat that is the main component, cooked gently in butter until done.
Cucumbers
Provide the main vegetable body and moisture, softening as they cook in butter.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the cucumbers, sauce, and the skillet cooking.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the finished dish.
Shallot vinegar
Adds sharp acidity and aroma to finish the dish.

The step that matters

Cook the cucumbers over low heat until tender. Low heat softens the cucumbers gently in butter without browning or breaking them down too fast, keeping the sauce smooth and the pieces intact.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, lemon, shallot, vinegar, sugar, parsley):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, lemon, shallot, vinegar, sugar, parsley. 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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