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Scotch Collops

A veal dish simmered with onion and mace in a gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Scotch Collops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Dredge the veal pieces in flour.

  2. Fry the veal in fresh butter until light brown.

  3. Place the fried veal in a stew pan.

Make the gravy

  1. Gradually add boiling water to cover the veal. Shake the pan.

  2. Bring the liquid to a boil and skim off the scum.

  3. Add the onion and mace. Simmer gently for 45 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the veal on a dish.

  2. Pour the strained gravy over it.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Is the main protein that becomes tender during slow simmering in the gravy.
Flour
Coats the veal so it browns in the butter and thickens the gravy slightly.
Fresh butter
Fat for frying that gives the veal a light brown colour and rich flavour.
Onion
Adds savoury, aromatic flavour to the gravy as it simmers.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the gravy.

The step that matters

Fry the veal until light brown. Browning the flour-coated veal in butter creates flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale veal gives a bland gravy, while over-darkening can make the flour taste bitter and burnt.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, flour, butter, onion, mace, wine, ketchup):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Applefits about as well
  3. Grapefits less well
  4. Raisinfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, flour, butter, onion, mace, wine, ketchup. 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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