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Scotch Collops

Veal collops simmered in a sauce of gravy, lemon, anchovy, morels, browning, ketchup, and lemon-pickle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Anchovy and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 479 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Scotch Collops

Ingredients

Directions

Fry the collops

  1. Cut collops from the thick part of a leg of veal.

  2. Heat butter in a frying pan and fry the collops over high heat until browned.

  3. Remove collops and place them in a pot.

  4. Add more butter to the pan and fry additional collops.

  5. Pour the liquor from the fried collops into a stew pan.

Make the sauce

  1. Add gravy, lemon juice, anchovy, morels, browning, ketchup, and lemon-pickle to the liquor.

  2. Season with salt and Cayenne pepper, then thicken with butter and flour.

  3. Let the sauce boil for 5-6 minutes, then add the collops and shake gently without boiling.

Serve

  1. Remove collops and place them on a dish.

  2. Strain the sauce and pour it hot over the collops.

  3. Garnish with force-meat balls, curled bacon, and mushrooms.

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. Anchovy + ketchuptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Ketchup + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Collops of veal
Lean veal slices form the tender main body of the dish, cooked quickly over high heat.
Butter
Browns the collops in the pan and enriches the sauce with fat and flavour.
Gravy
Supplies the liquid base of the sauce and carries the other flavourings.
Morels
Add an earthy, aromatic flavour to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it coats the collops.
Lemon-pickle
Adds acidity and savoury tang to the sauce.

The step that matters

Shake the collops in the sauce without boiling. Boiling toughens meat proteins and makes the veal dry and stringy, so the collops should be warmed gently in 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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