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White Collops

A veal stew of collops simmered with broth, cream, and optional orange juice, forcemeat balls, oysters or mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

White Collops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Butter the bottom of a stew pan.

  2. Add the veal pieces and sprinkle with flour.

  3. Heat the pan on the fire, tossing the meat until it turns white.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the veal broth and cream, then toss the mixture.

  2. Simmer until cooked, then let it just boil.

  3. If desired, add orange juice, forcemeat balls, and oysters or mushrooms.

  4. To thicken the sauce, you may add a beaten egg.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Oyster + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 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
Is the main protein, cooked gently until it turns white and tender in the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the meat brown lightly in the pan before the liquid goes in.
Flour
Coats the meat and thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce.
Veal broth
Provides the savoury liquid base that forms the body of the sauce.
Cream
Adds fat and a silky texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer until cooked, then let it just boil. Boiling hard after the meat is cooked can toughen proteins and cause the cream sauce to break or separate, so keep the heat gentle and bring it to only a brief boil.

Swap the orange

The recipe marks orange as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, butter, flour, cream, oyster, egg):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Orangethe original

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