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Scotch Collops

Scotch Collops is veal cut into thin pieces, fried and served with a sauce of gravy, butter, flour, egg yolk, cream, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 bits about 3 inches long and round.

  2. Beat the veal with a rolling pin and grate nutmeg over them.

  3. Dip the veal bits into the egg yolk.

Fry and make the sauce

  1. Fry the veal in butter until golden brown.

  2. Remove the butter from the pan.

  3. In a separate bowl, mix gravy, a bit of butter rubbed into flour, an egg yolk, cream, and salt.

  4. Stir the sauce until it thickens, but do not boil.

Serve

  1. 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. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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
Is the main protein; beating and frying it gives a tender, browned surface.
Egg yolk
Coats the veal and, in the sauce, emulsifies and thickens the liquid for a smooth texture.
Butter
Fats for frying that promote browning and add rich flavour to the veal.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter and gravy.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the sauce until it thickens, but do not boil. Egg yolk thickens by gentle heat. If the sauce boils, the yolk can scramble and curdle, leaving a grainy, thin sauce instead of a smooth one.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, egg, butter, sauce, flour, cream):

  1. Capersfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Tarragonfits less well
  4. Parsleyfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, egg, butter, sauce, flour, cream. 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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