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Scorched Collops

Scorched collops are thin veal slices fried and simmered with sauce, mushrooms, truffles, morels, artichokes, sweetbreads, egg balls, and bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Mushroom and truffle are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,900 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Scorched Collops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the collops

  1. Cut veal cutlets into small, thin pieces.

  2. Fry them in a little boiling lard until light brown.

  3. Drain the cutlets and place them in a stewpan.

Stew and serve

  1. Add cullis, stewed mushrooms, truffles, morels, artichoke bottoms, sweetbreads, and egg balls.

  2. Simmer over low heat until tender, seasoning to taste.

  3. Serve with rashers of broiled bacon around the dish.

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. Mushroom + truffletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Mushroom + artichoketop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together447 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Veal + truffletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together815 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Truffle + artichoketop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together240 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Meat + truffletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together527 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Veal cutlets
Provides the tender meat that is the base of the dish.
Lard
Fries the veal, creating a light brown surface and rich flavour.
Cullis
Meat sauce that moistens the veal and carries the savoury flavour through the stew.
Morels
Add earthy, concentrated mushroom aroma to the stewed mixture.
Sweetbreads
Contribute a soft, delicate texture that contrasts with the firmer veal.

The step that matters

Frying the cutlets until light brown. Browning the thin veal pieces in hot fat creates flavourful Maillard browning on the surface. Overcooking them at this stage toughens the meat before the long simmer.

“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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