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Veal Cutlets, or Collops, a LA Française

Veal cutlets or collops seasoned with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and curry, fried and served with Espagnole sauce, lemon juice, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Veal Cutlets, or Collops, a LA Française

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the veal into small, thin, round pieces of equal size.

  2. Arrange the pieces in a frying pan and sprinkle with salt, white pepper, and nutmeg.

  3. Melt the butter in a saucepan and pour it over the meat.

  4. Set aside until ready to cook.

Cook and serve

  1. Fry the collops over medium heat for 4-5 minutes until lightly browned.

  2. Transfer to a hot dish and sauce with Espagnole or gravy mixed with lemon juice and cayenne.

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

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

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. White pepper + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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; thin, even pieces cook quickly and stay tender.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the meat brown lightly.
Espagnole sauce or gravy
Supplies moisture and a savoury, rich flavour to the cutlets.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Fry the collops briefly over medium heat. Thin veal dries out and toughens quickly when overcooked. Frying only until lightly browned keeps the meat moist and tender.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, bread, butter, nutmeg, sauce, lemon, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, bread, butter, nutmeg, sauce, lemon, pepper. 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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