Skip to main content
Main

Scotch Collops

Veal pieces fried in butter, simmered with onion and mace in water, served with strained gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Scotch Collops

Ingredients

Directions

Fry the veal

  1. Dredge the veal pieces in flour and fry them in fresh butter until light brown.

  2. Place the fried veal in a stew pan and sprinkle with more flour.

Make the gravy

  1. Gradually add boiling water to cover the veal, shaking the pan as you pour.

  2. Bring to a boil, skim off any scum, and add the onion and mace.

  3. Simmer gently for 45 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the veal on a dish and strain the gravy over it.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
Is the main meat that becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Flour
Coats the veal and thickens the liquid into a gravy as it cooks.
Butter
Fries the veal pieces, adding browning and rich flavour to the surface.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma to the simmering gravy.

The step that matters

Gradually add boiling water while shaking the pan. Adding the water slowly while shaking distributes the flour evenly, so the gravy thickens smoothly without lumps.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, flour, butter, onion, mace, wine, ketchup):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, flour, butter, onion, mace, wine, ketchup. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes