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Scotch Collops with a Brown Sauce

Thin slices of meat served with a brown sauce of butter, veal gravy, ketchup, oysters, lemon, and white wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Scotch Collops with a Brown Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Gut the collops.

  2. Flatten the collops.

  3. Season the collops with mixed spices and coarse sea salt.

  4. Strew grated bread over the collops.

Brown

  1. Brown the collops on both sides in a clean pan with a little butter.

  2. Brown and thicken more butter in the same pan.

Make the sauce

  1. Stir in veal gravy and ketchup.

  2. Skim the sauce.

  3. Add oysters.

  4. Add browned force-meat balls.

  5. Add lemon juice.

  6. Add white wine.

Finish and serve

  1. Put the collops in the sauce.

  2. Stew for about 15 minutes.

  3. Serve.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Bread + oystertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,545 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

Collops of meat
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender while stewing in the sauce.
Butter
Browns the collops and adds richness to the sauce.
Grated bread
Coats the collops and soaks up juices, helping to thicken the sauce.
Veal gravy
Adds savoury depth and body to the sauce.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savoury sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Brown the collops on both sides in a clean pan with a little butter.. Browning triggers the Maillard reaction, which builds deep savoury flavour and colour. Crowding the pan or letting the meat steam instead of sear prevents this, leaving the dish pale and flat.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, bread, butter, veal, ketchup, oyster, white wine):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, bread, butter, veal, ketchup, oyster, white wine. 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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