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Scotch Collops

A veal dish with collops simmered in brown gravy, wine, and assorted delicacies, topped with bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and white wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,083 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Scotch Collops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Cut the veal into thin pieces, about the size of a crown piece.

  2. Dust the veal with flour.

  3. Melt butter in a frying pan and fry the collops quickly until brown.

  4. Place the collops in a dish.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt butter and add flour, stirring until smooth.

  2. Pour in the brown gravy and season with pepper and salt.

  3. Add white wine, sweetbreads, force-meat balls, truffles, morels, oysters, and mushrooms.

  4. Stew gently for 30 minutes.

  5. Add the juice of half a melon and pour over the collops.

Garnish and serve

  1. Garnish with rashers of bacon.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Veal + truffletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together815 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + truffletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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 fillet
Forms the main meat, cooked quickly so the thin pieces stay tender.
Flour
Coats the veal for browning and, cooked with butter, thickens the sauce.
Brown gravy
Provides the main liquid and savoury base of the sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity that brightens the rich gravy and mushroom flavours.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and a soft, moist texture to the sauce.
Truffles
Add a concentrated, aromatic earthy flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Fry the collops quickly until brown. Thin pieces cook through fast, so a hot pan and short time brown the surface and keep the meat tender. Overcooking dries them out before they go into the sauce.

“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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