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Scotch Collops

Veal collops fried in butter, served with a cream and flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Cream and butter 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 the veal into thin pieces about three inches wide and round.

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

Fry and make the sauce

  1. Dip the pieces in the egg yolk and fry in butter until golden brown.

  2. Remove the butter and prepare the sauce by mixing gravy, butter, flour, cream, and salt.

  3. Stir the sauce until thickened, then pour over the collops to 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. Cream + buttertop 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 quickly to stay tender when thinly cut.
Egg yolk
Coats the veal so it browns evenly and helps the coating hold in the pan.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks, giving it body.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness to the sauce.
Butter
Fries the veal to golden brown and adds rich flavour.

The step that matters

Stir the sauce until thickened. Flour must be cooked while stirred so it thickens smoothly without lumps. Stopping too early leaves a raw, pasty taste, while letting it boil too hard can make the cream split.

“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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