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Scotch Collops

A veal dish with thin cut collops served in a creamy gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Scotch Collops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Cut veal into thin, round bits about 3 inches wide.

  2. Beat the veal with a rolling pin and sprinkle with nutmeg.

  3. Dip the veal in the egg yolk and fry in butter until golden brown.

Make the sauce

  1. Pour off the butter and prepare the sauce.

  2. Mix gravy, flour rubbed with butter, egg yolk, cream, and salt in a pan.

  3. Stir the sauce until thick, but do not boil.

  4. Serve the sauce warm over the collops.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked into tender, browned pieces.
Egg yolk
Dipping coat for the veal and enriches and thickens the sauce.
Butter
Fries the veal to golden brown and adds richness to the flour mixture.
Flour
Thickens the gravy into a smooth sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the sauce until thick, but do not boil. Egg yolk is used to thicken the sauce. Above a gentle heat the yolk proteins can scramble and curdle, leaving the sauce grainy instead of smooth.

“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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