Skip to main content
Main

Venison Collops

Venison collops simmered in butter, gravy, wine, and optional sauces, then served with strained sauce.

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

Why it works: Mushroom and white wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,765 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity. The science ↓

Venison Collops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut nice thin cutlets from the venison and season well with mixed spices.

Make the sauce

  1. In a stew pan, brown the cutlets in butter.

  2. Add the brown gravy, port or claret, mushroom catsup, walnut catsup, soy sauce, fried bread crumbs, and white wine vinegar.

  3. Stew slowly until the collops are cooked through.

Serve

  1. Place the collops in a dish.

  2. Strain the sauce over them.

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. Mushroom + white winetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Venison cutlets
The main meat, cut thin so it cooks through quickly in the sauce.
Butter
Fat for browning the cutlets, adding colour and rich flavour to the surface.
Brown gravy
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding savoury depth and body.
Port or claret
Adds wine acidity and sweetness that balance the rich meat and gravy.
Fried bread crumbs
Thicken the sauce slightly and add body to it as they soften.
White wine vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that brightens and balances the rich, savoury sauce.

The step that matters

Stew slowly until the collops are cooked through. Thin cutlets cook quickly and can toughen if boiled hard. A gentle simmer keeps the meat tender while the sauce reduces and flavours develop.

Swap the walnut

The recipe marks walnut as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, butter, mushroom, sauce, bread, white wine, vinegar):

  1. Peasfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, butter, mushroom, sauce, bread, white wine, 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipes