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Scotch Collops

Veal collops fried and served with a gravy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Scotch Collops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Cut veal into thin bits about 3 inches long and round them slightly.

  2. Beat the veal with a rolling pin.

  3. Sprinkle grated nutmeg and pepper over the veal.

  4. Dip the veal pieces into the egg.

Fry and make the sauce

  1. Fry in butter until golden brown.

  2. Remove excess butter from the pan.

  3. In the same pan, add ½ pint of gravy and a little flour; bring to a boil.

  4. Add the juice of the lemon and a little coarse sea salt.

Serve

  1. Place the collops on a dish and strain the sauce over them.

  2. Garnish with notched lemon.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Provides the main meat, which is tenderised slightly by beating and then browned in butter.
Egg
Coats the veal pieces so the surface can brown evenly in the butter.
Butter
Fries the veal, giving it a golden brown surface and rich flavour.
Gravy
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that coats the collops.
Flour
Thickens the gravy into a sauce that clings to the veal.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and butter.

The step that matters

Frying the veal until golden brown. Veal is lean and cooks quickly, so overcooking makes it dry and tough. Browning in hot butter builds flavour, but the pieces must be cooked only until golden so they stay tender.

“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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