Skip to main content
Main

A Scotch Collops

Veal collops simmered in a sauce of gravy, lemon, anchovy, morels, browning sauce, ketchup, and lemon pickle, garnished with bacon, mushrooms, and lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

A Scotch Collops

Ingredients

Directions

Fry the collops

  1. Heat butter in a frying pan over high heat.

  2. Fry the collops until browned, shaking and turning them to keep them frothy.

  3. Remove the collops and place them in a pot.

  4. Add more butter to the pan and fry additional collops.

Make the sauce

  1. Pour the cooking liquid into a stew pan and add gravy, lemon juice, anchovy, morels, browning sauce, ketchup, and lemon pickle.

  2. Season with salt and cayenne pepper, then thicken with butter and flour.

  3. Boil for 5-6 minutes, then add the collops and gently shake without boiling.

Serve

  1. Remove the collops and place them on a dish.

  2. Strain the sauce and pour it hot over the collops.

  3. Top with force-meat balls, curled bacon, mushrooms, and garnish with lemon slices.

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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Anchovy + ketchuptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

Leg of veal
Forms the tender meat that is browned and then gently simmered in the sauce.
Butter
Browns the collops in the pan and enriches the sauce with richness and flavor.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the collops.
Morels
Adds earthy, savory flavor to the sauce.
Anchovy
Adds deep savory saltiness that rounds out the sauce.
Lemon pickle
Adds sharp acidity and tang to balance the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Boil for 5-6 minutes, then add the collops and gently shake without boiling.. Once the collops go back in, boiling would toughen the meat and make the sauce break. Keeping it just below a boil keeps the meat tender and the sauce 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipes